Cape May Brewery Head Brewer Brian Hink Talks Temporarily Permanent

We spoke with Cape May Brewery Head Brewer Brian Hink about Temporarily Permanent.

BC: Who came up with this beer’s recipe?
Temporarily Permanent started its life as a simple golden base beer intended for extended barrel-aging and was one of our first beers to be laid to rest in barrels to begin our sour program. We wanted each of the initial beers to focus on a specific aspect of barrel-aging -- maltier beer with a diverse set of microbes, expressive base beer with diverse microbes, Brett Saisons, and, in what came to be Temporarily Permanent, a Brett-heavy base beer intended for fruiting. So, while I technically came up with the recipe here, the end result was a team effort. From the cellaring, to the sensory panel selecting the right barrels for blending, to selecting the right fruit to pair off the barrels, to packaging what was our first can-conditioned sour beer, Temporarily Permanent was truly the work of the whole production team here at CMBC. 

BC: What’s your favorite aspect of this beer (flavor, aroma, etc.)?
This beer is very layered throughout. Upfront is a lot of the rustic Brett notes, followed by the subtle fruitiness, with a gentle acidity rounding everything together: it's really a fun beer. It definitely doesn't drink like 9.2%, but I really think that helps attribute another layer of depth to the whole profile. 

BC: Where does this beer’s name come from?
As a continually growing production brewery, we have a tendency to put something -- a new piece of machinery, a table for storing packaging materials, a desk for short-term work, countless little things like this -- that are simply temporary: we'll find a full-time home for them eventually. Last winter, we decommissioned our bottling line to make space for our canning line, but we still needed to be able to bottle, so it became a manually run bottling line. Every time we ran it, the crew would always ask how much longer we were going to be running the line, and I'd say "remember - this is just temporary," to which we'd all have a good laugh while realizing it was temporarily becoming a permanent thing. When we started talking about names for upcoming sour beers that were about to be launched with a new approach to packaging -- hand-filling cans to be can-conditioned -- I threw out "Temporarily Permanent" partly as an inside joke with the production team and partly because I knew that whatever way we came out with canning these beers would be temporary.

BC: Is this your “desert island beer?”
I don't think I could ever have a "desert island beer" -- there are simply too many awesome beers and flavors out there that I would never want to cut myself off from all of them. That being said, I do really enjoy this beer and would have absolutely no problem drinking this again and again! Unfortunately, due to the nature of barrel-aged beers, they tend to not be available again and again, but this is definitely a beer I hope we revisit and brew again someday.

BC: What's a good food pairing for this beer?
A fruit and cheese plate would be delicious with this beer. The rustic undertones of the beer would play very nicely off an earthy cheese, and the fruit would pair beautifully with the subtle fruitiness of the beer. And, being 9.2% ABV, this is definitely a sipper of a beer, and those gentle sips would be right at home paired with the more peaceful mindset of enjoying a fruit and cheese plate.

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