I didn’t realize when I started the beta testing gig for The Yeast Bay that I’d end up working with 2 very generous guys who both focus on making delicious sour beer. We agreed to send each other samples of our homemade sours. Brian recently reviewed the beers I sent him on his blog and I believe Ed plans to do the same soon. Given the somewhat special nature of these beers, I thought they would make for a good final homebrew tasting video and sampled all 3 together with a good buddy, Sean Wood, current president of my local club, San Joaquin Worthogs.
Brian Hall runs a great blog, Brouwerij-Chugach, where he writes about his “obsessions” with beer and food, as well as providing great product reviews and tasting notes of others’ beer. You can read about the beer he sent me in a post of his from June called Lambiek Zomer.
Ed Coffey runs another killer blog, Ales of the Riverwards, where writes a lot about his experiments with wild yeast strains, blending beers, and all kinds of other brewing related things I’m too anxious to venture into (yet). The first beer we tasted of Ed’s was his attempt at a Prairie Artisan Ales ‘Merica clone (link to blog) and the second was a Geuze he blended consisting of 1 year, 2 year, and 2.5 year old Lambic beers he had made.
I mention often my lack of beer judging skills (one of the few reasons I’m done with these video reviews), but this is even more pronounced when it comes to sour beers. While I try to be discerning and honest, I really don’t get my kicks off of being a snooty beer tasting prick. Sean and I approached this tasting almost completely blind, we only knew where the beers came from and that they were funky/sour. We both stand behind our reviews of these beers wholeheartedly. For a sort of cliff notes version of what we really think, start the video at 9:30.
No joke, we’d spent the prior couple hours tasting beers from some of our favorite sour breweries including Almanac, The Bruery, and many others. Brian’s and Ed’s beers were as good if not better than many of the commercial beers. Simply delicious. Thanks again for send them out, guys, keep doing whatever it is your doing. Cheers!
CORRECTIONS:
I provided the wrong website addresses for Ed and Brian, here are the correct ones:
Ed’s is http://riverwards.blogspot.com
Brian’s is http://brouwerij-chugach.com
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3 thoughts on “Sours From The Other Coast :: Homebrew Tasting”
I watched this post earlier today, then tonight saw Tonsmeire’s latest post on the ability of some strains of brett to release additional aromatics from many hops via the enzyme β-glucosidase. The first thing I thought of was your discussion on how the one brett beer had such an intense fresh hop character. It would seem that there is some scientific evidence to back your observation!
– Dennis, Life Fermented Blog
Just came to post about the same. Marshall mentioned it, and Mike T. has the science, but its something that I have been amazed about with Brett and hops over the years. Especially in Jah-rod, it was heavily dry hopped with ~6oz of Nelson, but its seriously mind blowing how aromatic the beer is 6 months in the bottle. Its in a great age right now where the hops are holding on and the tropical fruit notes from Brett Trois and pinneapple from Brett C are coming on strong.
This post and Tonsmeire’s got me into the research’n mood, and I found all I could find on β-glucosidase. I wrote up the results of my research in a homebrewtalk.com article, for anyone interested.