Thursday Tap - Freigeist Brettokolong

Every Thursday at 5 pm, Jimmy's No. 43 taps a special keg. Sometimes it's a seasonal, sometimes a limited offering, and sometimes a new release. Today, it's a limited keg of a new release from a new-to-the-US brewery:  Freigeist's Brettokolong, an unfiltered kölsch fermented with brettanomyces.

Jimmy's is located at 43 E. 7th Street.

The Freigeist beers come from the Braustelle brewery in Cologne, Germany. You hear "Cologne/Köln" and you think "Kölsch". Now there's a new brewery in town that not only brews a kölsch (unfiltered, so they can't legally call it kölsch) but also other updated versions of old German styles, even an Altbier - a traditional beer from Düsseldorf. Sacrilege!

Peter Esser and Sebastian Sauer, the brewers at Braustelle, don't always brew according to the Reinheitsgebot. As a result, their special Freigeist Bierkultur line of brews ("freigeist" means "free thinking") run the gamut from smoky to sour to malty to floral. Look for newly arrived bottles and kegs of the following beers:

• Ottekolong - unfiltered kölsch
• Brettokolong - draft version of Ottekolong fermented with brett
• Pimock - hoppy Rheinland weizen
• Abraxxxas - inspired by Lichtenhainer, an old style of smoked weisse beer popular in 19th century eastern Germany. The Freigeist version also has some lactic sourness because the brewers are fans of sour beers like Berliner Weisse and Gose and because most beers would have had some degree of sourness in the past
• Hoppeditz - 7.5% doppel sticke alt brewed with smoked malt. The name comes from the puppet which is burned in Düsseldorf on Ash Wednesday at the end of Carnival. Carnival is also known as the fifth season so 5 malts and 5 hops are used to brew this beer.