Our Mission

Musings Fermentation Underground is a barrel-aged brewery that draws its inspiration from old world Belgian brewing traditions. Using locally sourced ingredients, our spontaneous fermentations are patiently aged to produce the finest blends of artisanal, wild and sour beers and kombucha you’ll ever enjoy.

Our Vision

Our vision is to expand the understanding and appreciation of traditional wild and sour beer brewing across the region, by consistently creating the most delicious seasonal releases to share with our customers. We believe life is meant to be sipped and savored, and building community that is supportive of each other and the planet is a worthy pursuit.

Meet Joe

After falling in love with home brewing and home wine making, Joe decided to dip his toes into the craft alcohol beverage industry as an assistant winemaker in the foothills of Virginia. He then completed the internationally recognized Master Brewers Program at UC Davis in California. With this experience, Joe spent over a decade brewing at three different breweries in Oregon, most notably Deschutes Brewery in Bend, Oregon. After moving back to the East Coast, he worked at Victory Brewing Company. Joe is also a professional sensory expert and has been an official judge for annual world-renowned competitions such as the Great American Beer Festival and the World Beer Cup since 2011. Joe has been test batching wild and sour oak barrel aged beers for Musings since 2017 and looks forward to sharing each new brand. 

Meet Lindsay

Lindsay is not a brewer, but she teaches about brewing and local foods as a professor in the Department of Geography and Spatial Sciences, in the College of Earth, Ocean and Environment at the University of Delaware. One way to describe what she does in her research and writing is considering the why of where. She definitely brings that perspective to the table when collaborating on recipe design, blending, and describing the effects of using a coolship to initiate spontaneous fermentations. Lindsay also leads the effort on our social media streams and responses, as well as providing an active voice within the Musings team when determining the ideal direction and approach to achieving the best possible experience with our beers and messaging.   

We love connecting people together through the shared passion and enjoyment of wild and sour beers. 

Whether you’ve been savoring our brews for a while or are recently smitten, join us around the table! There’s no better feeling than seeing familiar faces, conversing about something you love, and bonding over a shared experience.

We appreciate the influence of our local region, infusing its uniqueness and sense of place throughout our process.

Musings is proud to call Newark, Delaware our home. We embrace what makes our community unique to create truly distinctive beers, whether we’re selecting seasonal produce, understanding how our microclimate affects fermentation, or working with regional artists to create our signature packaging. We support other independently-owned businesses in the area because we know this keeps our local economy strong and resilient.

We approach our craft with curious minds and a strong instinct to resist the status quo, or the ordinary.

Brewing wild and sour beers is not about replication and mass production. It’s about creating something utterly unique. Our natural curiosity and imagination drives us on a quest for the unexpected. We’re not afraid to transgress norms and experiment because it can send us in a whole new exciting direction. We’re constantly refining our craft and having a blast, doing what we love.

We introduce you to an expanded way of experiencing small-batch barrel-aged brews.

Our passion is re-creating and blending old-world brewing styles, often with a twist, and utilizing as well as developing new technologies to continuously refine our craft and push boundaries in the industry. We’re eager to share everything we’ve learned with you! What’s a sour beer? How is it different from a wild beer? With an understanding of the finer points and history behind this style of brewing, you’ll feel completely immersed in the craft, expand your beer palate, and enjoy a much richer tasting experience than you ever imagined.

We honor the art of fermentation, letting the brews tell us when they’re ready.

After initial fermentation, our beer is patiently aged in oak barrels. If it doesn’t meet our exacting standards, we’re not afraid to toss a batch, even though we’ve waited for years to see how it turned out! By selecting our ingredients with care, listening to what our brews need, and honoring our craft with time, we deliver exceptional artisan beers with every release.

We enthusiastically welcome your feedback.

Have a question? Just ask. Dying to share an idea? We can’t wait to hear it. That’s the beauty of the wild fermentation process—it’s always evolving based on ingredients, climate, barrel aging, and the alchemy of blending. Our collaborative, transparent approach ultimately makes our craft beer better and strengthens our community of wonderful customers, local partners, and vendors.

We recognize and respect the interconnectedness of our environment.

We know that our brewing process is intrinsically connected to our local ecosystem and watershed, which, in turn, is connected to our global environment. We do everything possible to support sustainable fermentation practices. Musings is part of 1% for the Planet, a global network of businesses and individuals that give 1% back from their annual sales to environmental causes.

• We welcome and encourage all to represent themselves as their full selves.  

• We believe all people are charged with grappling with the intersectional privileges and vulnerabilities that shape their processes of engagement.

• We commit to tackling, addressing, and challenging all forms of injustice in our places of production and business.  

• We acknowledge that we are here because of Settler-Colonialism.  We recognize that we occupy Lenni-Lenape Land.