A Place to Gather and Talk
Last month, I attempted to improve the quality of dialogue about sour beer by arguing that such a label is an insufficient and needlessly vague way of discussing the diverse range of beers that get lumped into that category simply because they are all somewhat acidic. In effect, “sour” beer is no more meaningful a term than “dark” beer.
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Profiled by Maria DevanThis is a saison that uses spelt malt and a late hop addition.
Beer uses two kinds of hops. Bittering and flavor and aroma hops. Bittering hops are added at the begining of the boil and that usually lasts between 60 and 90 minutes. 60 minutes less bitterness than at 90. For late hop addition the idea is that the oils from hops are delicate and they boil off leaving mostly bitterness. So to add flavor and aroma without bitterness you need to add the hops later in the cycle. Flavor and aroma hops are called late hop additions because you do not add them to the brew kettle until just before the end. Some brewers do more than one hop drop let’s say at 15, 10 and 5 minutes before flameout. “With an earlier addition, the flavor/aroma contribution will tilt toward flavor. With a later addition, the flavor/aroma contribution will tilt toward aroma.” You can add hops at flameout too and you can stand them after flameout for a period of time before you start chilling your wort. All these different hop schedules will tweak the aroma and flavors just a bit and the oils that blend from the hops you add can create new flavors or exciting combinations.
Spelt malt is usually used in full bodied top fermenting beer. It is a distant cousin to wheat and imparts dry tart, earthy character and improves head retention.
The pour is sultry yellow with a big head of white foam that dwindles. The color has a little golden edge to it. A stream of bubbles, soft haze. Fruity with melon husks sweet grasses and light lemon. It’s fragrant with a soft flower petal and the nutty perfume from the spelt malt. It’s like the musk on this citrusy fruity beer. Sharp little bit of pepper. Drinks softly and very elegant. The malt sinks into a bit of crackery softness with a touch more flavor than you were expecting. the citrus becomes prominent in the drink but it’s heady with dry lemon. Sweet grasses and alight touch of sugar finish this one dry and with a subtle cheek from bitterness. It’s put together very well and has the perfect bubble. You don’t notice any bite and the malt is very lush to the palate. I think there is a little dry funk on this beer too but I can’t prove it.
This is a lovely, malty saison with a bit of nutty flavor from the spelt malt and a vivacious late hop addition gives it presence on the nose. What I like about this style of beer is that it has a hearty character. The fruit is not easy to name and has a quality that sometimes I think you can only define by a color. Cool green like melon, mixed with a peppery herbal , lemon, a touch of tartness – its’ all compliments and that’s balanced. The bittering hop is strong and could take you to the aspirin like bitterness in a DIPA like heady topper, but in this one it’s softer than that. It does have a sharpness. This is not a big IPA with lots of slick feeling to the body so a crisp sharp bitterness accents dryness. It lingers but not longer than the faintly nutty malt and with the light lemon in the aftertaste. Your palate is not all the way reset because of the spelt and the sugar. You want to pair this beer with aged or soft cheeses and a variety of artisan breads and sandwich boards, smoked turkey with melted cheddar and apples.
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Maria Devan lives in Ithaca, NY and is a great beer writer. That’s Maria in the middle. The other two are not, but they are lucky to have her as a friend.
Morning! Sunner Kolsch. I will take an entire palate of this all for myself. I cannot believe how fast I drank this beer and I think that chugging got started because of this style.
Gives an elegant and very soft pour with a cream colored head of cottony cloud like foam. grainy, a bit of earth form hops and a barely perceptible fruity ester from yeast. banana.
On the palate the malt is soft and graceful. Fully breaddy. As soon as you swallow there is a faint little tang. It accents the steadfast malt so well and brings all the flavor together in compliment with a subtlety that is no trick. It’s simply an omission. Light sulfur. A touch of malt richness that shows the delicate complexity but does not bring it to you too powerfully. Restrained malt. As it lingers breaddy in the aftertaste you feel like you could drink the whole glass in one easy 
gulp. Crisp clean no diacetyl. This one is actually quite hoppy or quite fresh as compared to some.
Hop herbal gives a wink at the finish and then as you drink and start to notice more flavor it’s like soft yellow grasses. Almost hay. Dry, soft not bubbly.
Bitterness that is understated at first but does last a little. That choice for carbonation really allows the malt to be expressive and expansive. Hop floral was always there and now it’s time to laugh because this was beer not bread and an ale. A not too sweet flower petal.
It’s as though you looked down and saw a golden flower. So you ate it and made it you feel hearty and then you laughed.
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Maria Devan lives in Ithaca, NY and is a great beer writer. That’s Maria in the middle. The other two are not, but they are lucky to have her as a friend.
Cantillon needs no introduction. Even if you’re not yet a convinced imbiber of wild-fermented beers, chances are you’ve at least heard of Cantillon, that legendary Brussels brewery of mythic proportions and mystical imaginings. If lambic and gueuze producers in Flemish Brabant merit pilgrimages, Cantillon is the holy grail.
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This one is as fresh as it gets. it’s an Extra Special/ Extra Strong Bitter.
Pours clear and orange with a tan head that lasted well. Effervescing.
Citrusy crisp orange peel. Fresh tangy spice and twigs. Biscuity malt. Smooth and long. Nice and creamy but with a mellow but very deep toastiness. silky hops give chic citrusy 
flavor. Bubbly. Bitter finish to linger firm and to show off a little. The hops never take the middle as fresh they are. So succulent and the beer finishes malty. Gentle with tall sweet grasses that are juicy with stems that have a somewhat bitter and sticky sap. Fresh soft herbal. Light peppery bitterness as the toasty malt finishes round.
Exemplary.
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Maria Devan lives in Ithaca, NY and is a great beer writer. That’s Maria in the middle. The other two are not, but they are lucky to have her as a friend.
After watching the field-crushing performance by Jack Nicklaus during the 1965 Masters, Bobby Jones, the tournament’s legendary co-founder and a man idolized by Nicklaus himself, had the following to say about Nicklaus’ performance:
“He plays a game with which I am not familiar.”
That sentence runs through my head quite a lot when I hear homebrewers talk about brewing – especially when they’re citing professional brewery practices to justify something they believe to be essential to homebrewing.
When Jones gave his famous quote, he wasn’t being humble or even falsely modest: he was simply pointing out that the game of golf was so different compared to when he had competed (equipment, the advent of professional golfers whose sole vocation was the game, course design) that the two could hardly be compared. Â He was complimenting Nicklaus, to be sure – but he wasn’t necessarily conceding that Nicklaus was more skilled or talented.
So it is with homebrewing v. professional brewing. Â What is necessary, desirable, or appropriate for one is not necessarily so for the other. Â They’re playing a game with which we homebrewers are not (well, are maybe not) familiar.
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Skimming place names on a map of Belgium is like going into a prodigiously stocked bottle shop. Where do you start in a country with a beer heritage as rich as it is in Belgium? Trappist beers, witbier, saison, Flanders red, oud bruin? What about all those famous towns like Chimay, Roeselare, Poperinge, and Westvleteren –– to say nothing of urban beer havens such as Antwerp and Leuven?
For me, the choice was relatively easy: I had never had the opportunity to taste lambic, those Belgian ales discussed in hushed and reverent tones among adepts of the zymurgical arts, beers that rarely make it beyond the immediate vicinity of Brussels.
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Beer can taste better when presented along with music, according to a recent study published this May in Frontiers in Psychology. The study found that music may be used to add value to multisensory tasting experiences when there is a previous connection between a person and the music.
The effect of multisensory information on the taste of food and drink products is of growing interest. Research has shown that what we see and hear can greatly affect our perception and enjoyment of flavors. For example, a different color on product packaging leads to different flavor association.
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