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Thursday, February 28, 2013

Cherry Buckwheat Sour Ale Tasting

A wine glass of sour beer brewed with buckwheat and flavored with pie cherries.Here is a tasting of just one of those fun small-batch projects I have sitting around my basement waiting for me to post notes. This batch started life as an experimental buckwheat amber, soured with Jolly Pumpkin dregs and aged on rum-soaked American oak. On a big blending/bottling day I racked a gallon of the batch onto frozen/defrosted sour cherries where it sat for a couple months. Nothing too crazy, I say with a straight face.

Buckwheat Sour Cherry Amber

Appearance – Pigeon blood ruby. It is darker than many cherry beers, but brilliantly clear. Stunning really. The head retention is mediocre at best, sinking to a white wispy covering after a few minutes.

Smell – Prominent fresh cherries with a hint of basement mustiness. Some bread, and as it warms, sweet-vanilla from the oak. The nose is sweeter than I expected.

Taste – It possesses a nice mix of fruit and funk and a pleasant acidity. Not as sharp as many of my sours, both in terms of less acid and slightly more residual sweetness. Lingering fresh pie cherries into the finish. Not a super-complex sour beer, but the flavor is very pleasant.

Mouthfeel – Lightly tannic, not overly thin. Medium-low carbonation. Not sure if the buckwheat helped with the body or not, but it certainly didn’t hurt.

Drinkability & Notes – This is a solid sour-cherry amber. I really like the vanillin-rich American oak with the cherries. No off flavors, but the Brett/fermentation doesn’t shine either. This should age well, sadly with the small batch size I’m down to my last bottle.

6 comments:

  1. Your creativity knows no bound. Looks awesome

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  2. Do we want to really know how u can describe what "pigeon blood" looks like? Or is time to get you out of the city? :-)

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  3. I've just been watching too much Antiques Roadshow... pigeon blood red is the top color grade for rubies. From Wikipedia: "Prices of rubies are primarily determined by color. The brightest and most valuable "red" called pigeon blood-red, commands a large premium over other rubies of similar quality."

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  4. Why is this beer named after the kid from the Little Rascals?

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  5. Actually (I'd assume) the kid was named after the pseudo-cereal that I added to this beer.

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  6. I was going to ask the same about knowing the color of pigeon blood. I must admit that the explanation's better than expected...ha!

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