The Wood Shop.
A working barrel cellar and dedicated sour brewery on Bloomington's south side. Home to one of the most decorated mixed-fermentation programs in American craft beer.
Sour beer is a long argument with time. We started ours in 2006 and we're still listening.
The Wood Shop opened so the sours could have their own roof. Cleaner cultures. A purpose-built coolship. A cellar laid out for blending, not retrofitted into a corner of the brewery. Every Upland sour you've ever had passed through here.
We pull from over a thousand barrels — French oak, ex-wine, ex-spirits — inoculated with house mixed cultures we've kept alive for nearly two decades. The fruit comes from growers we've worked with for years: Michigan stone fruit, Pacific Northwest berries, Indiana orchard fruit when the season cooperates.
The beer ships across the country and across the Atlantic. The blends are named, signed, and dated by the cellar team. None of it is fast, none of it is easy, and that is exactly the point.
From coolship to bottle.
Wort cools overnight, catching wild yeast and bacteria native to the cellar.
Filled into French oak, ex-wine, and ex-spirits barrels for open-ended aging.
Whole fruit added on top of mature base beer for secondary fermentation.
Barrels tasted, mapped, and blended by the cellar team before bottle-conditioning.