Little Fish Beer Archive: Every beer we have ever brewed

Tart, “hop-less” ale brewed with Ohio wheat and barley, gunpowder green tea, and lemongrass.

FUN FACT: Fermented with Hanseniaspora vinae, a lactic acid-producing yeast isolated from the bark of an ash tree.

This saison is brewed with Ohio wheat & barley, and the juiciest hops we can source from the Pacific Northwest, including Equinox, Citra, Meridian, and Mosaic. The draft version is force carbonated, while the bottled version is bottle conditioned with our our “farmhouse friends” yeasts and Brettanomyces Bruxellensis. For more American hop character, we suggest drinking it fairly young. ... Read More

Brakeman’s Cuvee is inspired by the Moonville train tunnel in the Zaleski State Forest, which according to some accounts, is haunted by a brakeman named McDevitt, who drunkenly fell to his death under a train in 1873. (Please, do not operate heavy machinery after drinking this beer!)

The exact blend of Brakeman’s Cuvee will vary from year to year, but ... Read More

Petit Poisson is a traditional saison of fairly low alcohol, barrel aged and soured before packaging. It recently won a bronze medal at the 2018 World Beer Cup, in barrel-aged sour ale!

We brew this one with Ohio Pilsner, wheat, rye, and oats, and hop it with American-noble varieties. It undergoes a “short” 3-6 month oak aging period, where it ... Read More

Barrel-aged sour blonde ale with pawpaw fruit.

Ah, the serenity and beauty of nature…what a calming effect it has on the spirit! As we take a moment to breathe in that fresh air, small creatures remorselessly devour their prey alive, in a never-ending cycle of life and death.

You might take a moment to contemplate the seeming absurdity of it all ... Read More

Woodthrush is named for the Wood Thrush, whose birdsong is evocative of the lush and shady deciduous forests of Southeast Ohio. It’s a malty but dry farmhouse ale with a light spicing of coriander, lemon peel, and grains of paradise. Woodthrush is mashed with a base of Ohio pale, Vienna, and Munich malts, as well as malted wheat (from ... Read More

Barrel-aged Biere de Garde

We age our lightly spiced “Farmhouse biere de garde” in red wine barrels for 3-6 months with wild yeasts and bacteria, where it picks up some sourness, wine/oak character, and some “barnyard funk”. It’s then bottle conditioned for at least two months before releasing. This beer picked up a Gold Medal at the 2016 World Beer ... Read More

“Reinheitsgewhat!?” is a series of beers inspired by German Berliner weisse. However, it leaves the malt-hops-water-yeast constrictions of the Reinheitsgebot behind. We actually use no hops, but rely on acidity and interesting herbs or spices to provide a counterbalance to the beer’s sweetness. Many, but not all, contain fruit.

This batch was brewed with strawberry and rhubarb puree, as well ... Read More

Back after a short hiatus, our flagship saison is back with even more of our own unique regional terroir. This 100% Ohio-grown mixed culture saison was open fermented in our own coolship, and then spent close to 10 months in a dedicated stainless tank that serves as a solera vessel for all future batches.

This barrel-fermented, mixed fermentation saison was inspired by an old children’s poem by Edward Lear called “The Owl & The Pussycat”. The specific line is: “They dined on mince, and slices of quince, Which they ate with a runcible spoon”. Some people interpret that as a spork, but no one really knows what he meant by “runcible”.

Runcible Spoon the ... Read More

“Reinheitsgewhat!?” is a series of beers inspired by German Berliner weisse. However, it leaves the malt-hops-water-yeast constrictions of the Reinheitsgebot behind. We actually use no hops, but rely on acidity and interesting herbs or spices to provide a counterbalance to the beer’s sweetness. Many, but not all, contain fruit.

This batch was barrel aged for 3 months on passionfruit and ... Read More

Barrel-aged sour red ale with Montmorency & Balaton cherries.

A lot of folks might not be aware of this, but Little Fish co-owners Sean & Jimmy spent a lot of their youth playing fantasy role-playing games like Dungeons & Dragons together. These games often don’t get the credit they deserve for helping young adults develop important life skills, such as ... Read More

Maker of Things is our American take on a Belgian Flanders red ale. This beer ages in a fleet of foeders (large-format wine barrels). When Maker is mature, we pull off a portion of each foeder (ususally a third), and refill it with freshly fermented red base. In this way, we achieve a continuity of flavor, age, and deeper ... Read More

Wine barrel-aged sour ale with Ohio black raspberries

Learn’d Astronomer has always been a wine-barrel aged sour ale fermented on raspberries, but this batch (the fourth), represents the first time we have been able to do that with entirely Ohio-grown fruit. Most of the raspberries were black raspberries, grown by Stokes Farm, in Wilmington, Ohio. These berries are extremely special; ... Read More

The Acorn is a symbol of life and potential. From this small seed comes a majestic tree. The Aecern was aged in our new, 930-gallon white oak foeder that is the centerpiece of our barrel aging program. A portion of this beer will be left in the foeder as the “seed” for our next batch of foeder-aged beer, a ... Read More

Sunfish is our mixed-culture, barrel-aged saison, brewed with Ohio wildflower honey. A large majority of the malt and hops were grown and processed in our home state of Ohio. This bottling (our third) contains a blend of barrel-aged saisons with an average age of 1 year, which we blended and bottle conditions with honey as our priming sugar.

We brewed ... Read More