Behind the Scenes at Barncat

Behind the scenes, with a still aging wine blended saison.

We first met Jeremy from Barncat at another partner brewery of ours, Block Three. Prior to our meeting, we had only been afforded the opportunity to browse through Barncat's Instagram feed, which absolutely blew us away. It's said that curiosity killed the cat, but we highly recommend checking it out.

The brewery is run by Jeremy and Matt. They brew for 5 days out of every week, and sell during the collective 9 hours that they're open on Friday and Saturday. Lucky for us, Jeremy gave us a private tour before the brewery opened their doors one Friday. The brewery is quite a bit smaller in terms of capacity in comparison to others that we've seen, however every square inch was being to put to delicious use. We were treated to two brews that hadn't been released yet and are most certainly sold out by now; Cat's in Space and an unnamed pour featured in the picture above.

Cats in Space was a 100% Galaxy hopped Double IPA (DIPA). As one would expect with Galaxy hops, we got a huge punch of passion and stone-fruit on the nose with citrus cutting through on tongue and palette. The beer was beautifully hazy and apricot in colour. What really set this beer apart for us was the lack of pine overtones that are perhaps too common in some IPAs.

The unnamed brew pictured above was actually one week away from completion and poured straight out of the foeder. It was 75% Brett Saison and 25% Niagara Sauvignon Blanc. The foeder was being used to ferment the beer as well as help its complex tartness and funk to develop. The flavour was intriguing in all of the right ways. We really enjoyed what we got to try that day and could only imagine what the brew became once it had an extra week to develop.

The reason why we decided to partner with Barncat is because of their dedication to the craft of brewing. The brewery's size affords the Matt and Jeremy to be just as creative as they were in their humble beginnings as homebrewers; there is no one stopping them from putting 44 pounds of hops or 50 pounds worth of lemon zest in a 600L batch. Barncat is something everyone should check out.

You can find out more about Barncat on our Featured Brewers Page, or even our Cat Factory review!