Like all our beers, Downstream Jam is made with local, Ohio-grown malted barley but the real stars of the show are our proprietary blend of yeasts acting in conjunction with an obscene quantity of Montmorency Cherries to produce a fizz, flavour and aroma reminiscent of Italian table wine with an unexpected earthy finish that reminds one of sucking that last bit of fruit flesh from the cherry’s pit.
DSJ is a tart tug-of-war between dark black cherries and the benevolent bacteria lactobacillus. Prickly and floral, tangy with a touch of salt, it’s a palatable reminder of the far-off buzz of summer cicadas playing backup to the aroma of cherry blossoms and fresh mown grass.
For the first few weeks that we ran our new canning line, the line would periodically just stop — seemingly out of the blue — and the operator interface would show an a error message that simply read “Downstream Jam”. We couldn’t figure it out and for the first maybe eight runs it remained a mystery. Someone remarked that the error message sounded like the name of either a bluegrass music festival or a tart, refreshing fruit beer.
When we finally figured out that a very tiny difference in the speeds of two conveyors caused a slow-down that ultimately caused a traffic jam on the way through the date coder, we were elated. We’re into commemorating our foibles as well as our triumphs and so, since we don’t play fiddle or washboard we made this delicious fruit beer instead.
