Pryes Brewing Company - Idyll Forest – Onirique 2025

Onirique, which translates as “dreamlike”, undergoes a triple fermentation during its 2 ½ year production process. First, the beer spends time in Idyll Forest’s coolship, undergoing natural inoculation from the ambient Minnesota air, after which it rests in their foeders to develop flavor and character. Next, a second fermentation is conducted, during which they blend a combination of foeders and wine barrels with Grenache grape must. Finally, it all culminates with refermentation in the bottle to develop the ale’s carbonation and final character.

The label invokes the term “Rosé,” and it’s appropriate. This unusual wine-ale hybrid presents a pinkish-reddish-amber hue in the glass, with minimal foam. Being bottle-conditioned, there’s a mild haziness, and we can see light sediment through the clear bottle. Even before leaning in, we detect tart fruit aromas jumping out from the glass. The label mentions strawberry, raspberry, and cherry, and that is indeed an apt description – there are prominent berry notes here that come through juicy and quite tart. The open and mixed-culture fermentations lend a noticeable undercurrent of wild yeast funkiness amidst the tart lactic impressions.

As with many Belgian-style sour ales, the first sip is a wild ride… sour, funky, and juicy – waking the palate like an alarm clock playing Mozart at full blast. It’s beautiful, but boy have we woken up. As usual, however, after a couple sips the palate adapts to the acidity and we settle in for an elegant experience as layers and layers of flavor of emerge.

There’s a delicious wild ale at the center of Onirique, offering that characteristic Brettanomyces funk with shades of tropical and orchard fruits. Surrounding this core component we get a lactic overlay that’s quite tart, evoking Flanders Red impressions. Enrobing the whole affair are the overtly fruity high notes conjuring notes of sour cherry, gooseberry, and many other fruits ending in “-berry.” It’s all very evocative of both fruited (mostly kriek) lambic and Rodenbach. In fact, Onirique comes across as so thoughtfully constructed and well-integrated that it’s almost impossible to tell where the yeast-driven fruity esters end and the contributions of the Grenache grape must begins. Idyll Forest clearly allowed the beer to develop its own character with plenty of foeder time prior to the introduction of the must and secondary fermentation.

A delicious moderate sweetness lurks at the backbone of this brew too, holding it all together while creating an engaging interplay with the sour elements, culminating in the type of almost savory character that defines our favorite wild and sour beers. The elevated alcohol and mild (12 IBUs) of hop bitterness are barely perceptible as independent elements; instead, they integrate into the rest of the tart and funky notes to balance the core 2-row and wheat malt contributions, which offer just a touch of toastiness augmented by notes of oak barrel. Don’t expect much foam in this brew; there’s a very soft carbonation that adds a touch of lift, but it wisely is subdued to allow the other bright elements here to sing.

Onirique 2025 is easily among both our favorite wild ales and favorite fruited ales we’ve sampled in recent memory. We’re looking forward to seeing what they come up with next!

The brewery gave us a “best consumed by” date of 2030. Given the nature of this brew (2.5-yr aged, acidic, high-ABV), we’re confident this beer will last at least that long in one’s cellar, but do mind the clear bottle and keep it in a dark place. For pairing options, we’d choose to either contrast the beer’s sour edge with richness, or echo its fruit character. Think rich, creamy cheeses like brie or camembert, charcuterie, or duck with cherry compote to mirror the beer’s bold fruit notes. Earthy mushroom dishes, beet salads with goat cheese, or even dark chocolate desserts should play well too. Cheers!

Pryes (pronounced like “prize”) Brewing Company is the brainchild of founder Jeremy Pryes, whose colorful background includes such diverse roles as line cook, bouncer, graphic designer, IT and systems admin work, and ultimately, brewing. He holds a degree in Intensive Brewing Science and Engineering from the American Brewers Guild, in addition to being a BJCP beer judge and a board member for the Community Hop Garden, an urban agricultural co-op in the south Minneapolis neighborhood of Longfellow which gives local brewers access to freshly grown hops produced in their own city. In 2014, Pryes’ very first beer, Miraculum, was released – a “Midwest IPA” that sought to break free of West Coast and East Coast styles. In their words: “The perfect balance of West Coast hops and East Coast malts.”

Initially, Pryes brewed in Minnetonka in a dual proprietorship arrangement with Lucid Brewing where they shared the facility with Badger Hill, Inbound, and Bad Weather, producing around 800 barrels per year. Miraculum was the sole product Pryes brewed as they worked on plans for their own brewery, which finally opened in 2017 as one part production/packaging brewery and one part stunning taproom destination on the Mississippi River. This new location is situated near downtown Minneapolis on the western side of the Mississippi, just a couple hundred feet from the water, and the Taproom offers tons of beer options as well as a food menu focused on their signature wood-fired pizzas. The brewhouse gives them the potential for 20,000 barrels of annual production, and since launch, the brewery has expanded well beyond their flagship Miraculum to offer a large array of packaged beer and an even larger number of small-batch creations.

However, of most interest to us this month is Pryes’ spinoff brand, Idyll Forest Artisan Ales. Around 2020, Jeremy started work on this passion project dedicated to producing spontaneously fermented and mixed culture beers, along with beer-wine and beer-cider hybrids. He traveled extensively in Belgium, meeting brewers, establishing friendships, and learning everything he could from like-minded brewers.

Wisely setup in a separate facility about 20 minutes from Pryes’ main production facility (to protect the “clean” brewery from all the wild yeasts and bacterial cultures), Idyll Forest has been described as a “mad scientist lab” where Jeremy maintains what he calls a “flavor library” composed of dozens of different cultures in various vessels – each with its own unique character and flavor profile. There’s also a coolship where beers are inoculated by the outside air, in the traditional lambic way. An array of large foeders and barrels from Bordeaux fill out the space. Idyll Forest is guided by Jeremy’s own curiosity as he chases the answers to a continuous stream of “what if?” questions in his mind about hybrid ales with various fruits, new yeast & bacteria cultures, and endless blending possibilities. One thing that’s clear when you hear him speak is he has no love for falling into a rut; the whole Idyll Forest project is dedicated to discovering uncharted flavor experiences.

It's certainly a labor of love. As he puts it, “This is not putting it in a barrel and sitting it in the back corner, you can’t do this properly if you do that – you have to give it attention.” Each day after working at Pryes’ main brewery he drives over to Idyll Forest to work further on the brand’s unique projects. The nature of spontaneous fermentation, mixed cultures, and freshly harvested fruits means there is no autopilot here; he will guide, coax, and push towards a vision, but every vintage will end up unique.

His hard work has paid off and is getting noticed. The annual Festival of Wood & Barrel-Aged Beer (FOBAB) in Chicago is North America’s most prominent barrel-aged beer competition, attracting such heavyweight breweries with advanced barrel programs as The Lost Abbey (who won 1st Place for Blended Beer in 2024 for our club’s 30th Anniversary beer, Serpent’s Kiss… shameless plug – we still have bottles available in our online store), Perennial, Boulevard, Three Floyds, Firestone Walker, Goose Island, Half Acre, Sun King, Wicked Weed, and about 170 others. When Idyll Forest won both 2nd and 3rd Place in the Wild Beer (Acidic w/ Fruit) category in 2023, many people said “Who?” When Idyll Forest took 1st Place in 2024, the brewery showed it wasn’t a fluke.

We’re thrilled this month to introduce Pryes and Idyll Forest to our members with their superb and very limited 2025 vintage of Onirique, a barrel-aged wild ale/wine hybrid with Grenache grapes. To learn more about Pryes and Idyll Forest, visit them at www.pryesbrewing.com and idyllforest.com.