From brewing to maturation, tasty mixed-culture beer “just takes time,” says Big Friendly cofounder Will Quinlin. It can be hard to predict when a beer will be ready to shine—and that’s how it was with Galaxidion.
Brothers Will and Joe Quinlin first launched Oklahoma City’s Big Friendly in 2014 as a mobile beer bus, later opening their brick-and-mortar brewery in late 2020. They soon went on a tear with their mixed-fermentation program, winning nine Great American Beer Festival medals—six of them golds—in various categories over the past four years. Those wins also earned them Brewery of the Year honors in their size category in 2022 and 2023.
Initially, Galaxidion wasn’t a beer that the Quinlins were planning to enter in 2025. “Then we tasted it, and it was a last-minute change,” Joe says. That wasn’t a decision made lightly—it replaced Tapestry from an Asteroid, the 2023 gold medal–winner in the Brett Beer category. But Galaxidion went on to win gold there, too—one of four medals that the Big Friendly won in 2025, all in saison and mixed-culture categories.
Broadly, Joe says that the brewery’s ethos isn’t all that complex: “We’re pretty simple here,” he says. “We don’t overthink it much.”
Composition
Will says they generally make the base of their Brettanomyces-focused beers the same, starting with Weyermann Pilsner or a pale malt from Sugar Creek in Indiana.
But they also include a hefty portion of adjunct grains—often around 50 percent of the grist—to help build up the body of the beers and balance what the Brett will chew away. “These saison beers taste a little thinner versus using a Saccharomyces strain,” Will says.
He usually opts for spelt malt and flaked barley over wheat malt and oats. “I like the rustic flavor of those grains,” he says, adding that spelt has a higher protein content and tastes, to him, a bit nuttier and more complex than wheat. He also likes the grainy character that flaked barley can contribute as compared to oats.
When it comes to bittering, Will says he prefers a light touch of Noble hopping on the hot side. “I like that earthy, floral flavor that it brings,” he says. “The hops are low, but it might add a little layer in there, even though you could probably use any hops for bittering and come up with a great beer.”
The dry hops get a bit more interesting. Will says he doesn’t typically dry hop his saisons, but he did with Galaxidion. “I was thinking, ‘Citrus sounds nice,’” he says. “I’m pretty loose with all of our beers.”
After pitching the yeast, he ferments in the low 70s°F (21–22°C) before a free rise into the high 70s°F (24–26°C). Then the beer gets plenty of conditioning time. In Galaxidion’s case, it was five months before Will added dry hops—Citra and Mosaic—leaving them in for three or four days, just before bottling. “Both hops, especially Citra, blend so beautifully with the Brett character—that citrus and fruitiness.”
Will approaches dry hopping differently in a saison than he would in an IPA—and not just in quantities, but also in technique. “With IPAs, I will have CO2 pushing positive pressure at dry hop,” he says. “With saisons, I don’t do that. I’m introducing a little oxygen, and I’m okay with that.”
That little bit of oxygen might help add a touch of acidity to the dry-hopped beers—something that he also gets naturally in his foeder-fermented saisons. Galaxidion, however, ferments in stainless, with the hops being added about five months after fermentation.
Will says he likes how that touch of acidity plays with the citrus character and the yeast. For the latter, he’s leaned on three different strains from the Yeast Bay and especially recommends TYB307, a particular strain of Brettanomyces bruxellensis. “I think it’s the most lemony-tart of them all,” he says.
But he says he also enjoys TYB184 and TYB207—two other strains of Brettanomyces bruxellensis, isolated from different breweries—and he suggests that any interested brewers should just go down the line and try them all out, as he did. “Some throw more citrus or more sweet fruit, some are more funky and lean more toward that earthy, barnyard character,” he says. Sometimes he also blends two strains, and he might co-pitch them, or he might pitch one a week after the other.
In a beer like Galaxidion, Will says, he makes a series of decisions that further push the perception of tartness. “I’m adding Citra, I’m picking a yeast that is citrus-forward, and then the beer is ending at zero [°P] or even below zero—all those things combined create something that can be perceived as tart.”
Photo: Courtesy The Big Friendly
It “Just Takes Time”
The Quinlins say they don’t rush anything at the Big Friendly, especially their mixed-culture beers.
For a beer like Galaxidion, once it spends four to six months in stainless and sees its short dry hop, it’s time for bottling. The Big Friendly bottle-conditions Galaxidion and similar beers with wine yeast, carbonating them to about three volumes of CO2. Will says the goal is that when you crack the top, the neck of the bottle should have just a bit of foam starting to creep up. “Not too much, just a bit, and then you know it’s going to be bright,” he says.
It might only take a couple of weeks to carbonate the bottles—sitting upright at about 70–75°F (21–24°C)—but the brewery won’t release them for at least two months and often up to six months. Galaxidion took about a year from brew day to release.
Joe says they’ve tried to push it faster before, just to see if they can. “We tried to hurry it along by putting them in a warm shipping container,” he says. “It just ruins the beer. You cannot rush these beers. You can’t speed up the process. You just have to let it do its thing in a really controlled environment.”
How long to mature bottles is a question of taste—for example, Joe says, whether you want fresh fruit or a more rustic character. If you want the dry hops to shine, you might want to drink the beer sooner, closer to two months in the bottle. If you prefer the funkier, rustic earth tones that come with the aged Brett, going to 12 to 18 months might be better.
The brothers named Galaxidion after a Stereolab song. “Most of the saison names are Sun Ra references, or jazz in general,” Will says. But you won’t find any live music, trivia, or TVs at The Big Friendly. “Our taproom is about beer and conversation,” Joe says.
Saison can be a tough sell for most breweries these days—and it’s certainly not flying off the shelves at the Big Friendly—but the brewery sees a steady stream of customers throughout the year, in part thanks to the awards those beers have garnered.
“It gives out-of-towners more of a reason to come through,” Joe says. “There’s a lot of good beer around here, but I think because we’ve taken the time to put beer into competition and have been lucky enough to win some awards, it puts us on the map a little bit.”