"Wild Beer" as imagined by Maya Miller

The Sturdy Brewers are making a lot of appearances on this blog, and for good reason — their beers are perfect.  For my recent birthday, Brew Dog t-bone recently brought me back a bottle of De Struise’s Struiselensis from Philly’s so-close-yet-so-far beer Mecca The Foodery, and I was almost as excited (I won’t say more excited) about the De Struise beer he gripped for me as I was for the Bell’s, and if you know me, you know that’s saying a lot.

Struiselensis is more than the “normal” excellent beers that De Struise brews — it is a beer nerd’s dream.  The label alone boasts both the name of the labaratory where the yeasts and bacteria were harvested (Wyeast), and the very varieties of flavor and aroma producing yeast and bacteria employed (Brettanomyces Bruxellensis and Pediococcus Cerivisae).  So back to the old back and forth of cultural exchange — Belgian brewes trying to replicate Belgian styles by relying on American scientific expertise — amazing.

Struiselensis takes its name from a strain of Yeast which originates from the area around Brussells in Belgium where a lot of spontaneous fermentation still occurs.  First isolated in Britian (hence the name Brettanomyces or “British Brewer’s Yeast”), Brettanomyces offers an alternative flavor and aroma profile of the prolific than the standard Saccharomyces Cerevisiae, of which both Ale and Lager types exist.  “Brett Beers” aren’t Ales or Lagers if they are made with 100% Brett — they are just “Brett Beers.”  I’ll be brewing one of these soon and will report here on how it comes out.  When combined with Bacteria which are known to reside in the Barrels and Bottles of such brewing giants as Cantillon, Brett produces extremely complex, earthy beers which completely alter the landscape of Beer tastes, period.  The Struise brewers apparently tried to spontaneously ferment this beer but found their atmospheric components lacking — hence the help from American Yeast Gods Wyeast.

A “Wild” or “Sour” Ale, Struiselensis pours golden and slightly cloudy, with a quickly dissipating white, fizzy head.  Very carbonated as these beers tend to be, the mouthfeel is perfectly dry, complemented by an acidic, tart flavor profile that makes Struiselensis extremely drinkable.  The aroma is hardly captured by the typical flurry of adjectives (”earthy,” “horsey,” “citrusy,” “rotten,” or “leather,” for the record), but can stand to be a pretty decent benchmark for the Sour Ale category and Brett aroma in general (a more citrusy and less hoppy Orval is almost appropriate).  An incredibly drinkable, scientifically miraculous, well-balanced, and yes, Sturdy beer, Struiselensis is a lesson, an experience, and if I had a keg of it in my basement I wouldn’t mind drinking it every night.

Brasserie Fantome, a small brewery started in 1988 in Soy, Belgium by Dany Prignon is in many ways the quintessential Belgian “farmhouse” brewery.  Fantome produces a variety of beers, all of which can be safely classified as “Saisons.”  What a Saison is, as a style, is a lengthy description better left to the experts, but essentially it’s a historical style which was created by any one of the myriad of home farmhouse breweries in Belgium in the 19th and early 20th centuries.  Farms made beer to sustain themselves and workers who would come to work on their farms, as beer was a safer (and clearly more delicious) alternative to drinking water for hydration and health.  Saison was typically a low ABV beer, but this has changed over time.  As farms faded away, breweries consolidated, and the tastes for beer became more mainstream, Saison as a style became more rarefied.  Today it means any number of things, and Fantome does everything it can to blur these definitions.

I’ve recently been lucky enough to sample two offerings from Fantome, which produces beers that are apparently never made the same way twice, and widely vary in quality and ingredients.  The Chocolat is a Saison made with Hot Peppers and Chocolate, and pours a beautiful orange color with a quickly dissappearing head.  The “Heat” from the Peppers was all but gone by the time I got to his Chocolat, but the chocolate was present in the aftertaste of this amazingly weird beer.  Tartness is nicely balanced by a full bodied brew that goes down smooth and continuously changes as this beer sits out.  Stinky and I shared a bottle of this while we were camping and I was amazed at the different notes that come out of this beer as it warms up — everything from cheese, chocolate, sweetness from the malt, to a touch of bitterness from the hops comes at you when you sniff, which I did quite a lot.  The flavors are the same, mysterious, beguiling, but very pleasurable.  A hard to describe beer that is very worth grabbing if it crosses your path.

The Brise-BonBons (or “Ball Breaker”) is an apparent message to the “Tough” people of the world who insist on breaking balls, talking shit, and not doing anything about it.  Farm from an empty threat, this beer, which I sampled on tap at Spuyten Duyvil in Brooklyn, is quite a statement.  Supposedly “hoppier” than Fantome’s other offerings, this beer still lacks much bitter bite, but presents a fuller and more clear approach to the sour Saison style.  Funky all the way through, but crisp and full-bodied, the Brise-BonBons suffers from none of the “Light Struck” qualities that Fantome’s beers often possess, packaged as they are in green bottles.  Because there was no skunk to be found, the full range of flavors shines through, which I am currently at a complete loss to describe.  So don’t worry, or listen to my descriptions anyway, just track the beers down, and pretend you’re in the Belgian countryside.  It’s windswept and idyllic, and you’re tipsy on true artisinal beer.  What more could you ask for?

I could try to explain this beer and the style, and of course I’ll try — but here’s what the brewer has to say:

“Napoleon hailed this tart beer style “the Champagne of the North.” A lively and elegant masterpiece this Berliner Weiss is a kaleidoscope of fresh flavor. Barrel fermentation, Pinot Grigio, Riesling grapes and Wisconsin White Wheat are bottle fermented with five proprietary yeast strains. A connoisseur’s rare jewel both spirited and subtle, enjoy your sparkling toast under summer stars.”

Indeed.  Carey continues his “Unplugged Series” with one of the most perplexing and amazing German Beer styles — the Berliner Weiss.  Like a normal wheat beer, but never boiled and expressely made with the use of non-standard yeast strains which produce sour flavors and smells, this style is often consumed in Germany with fruit or herb syrups — famously, a green syrup made from Woodruff.

The New Glarus version is extremely refreshing — light bodied, citrusy, and sour, the beer is extremely well-balanced and drinkable.  I’m not sure what the ABV on this is but I’m guessing around 5%, perfect for a summer refresher.  Not quite as complex as an aged or blended Belgian sour beer, and more complex than a standard wheat beer, this brew really has it all.  A beautiful golden color, a quickly disappearing head, and an insane amount of weird grape and apple smells and flavors.  Like an alcoholic lemonade or a beer and apple juice hybrid, both in a good way, this is a truly artful beer and is another notch in the belt of Carey who is clearly one of the most talented and adventerous brewers in the States.  Highly recommended and seasonal, so track it down soon.

I am posting this from neck-deep in a fermentation obsession. My house is full of the books, talk, fruits, and stink of it. I have 4 vessels currently in some transformative state, including my first homebrew (more on this later), a crock of sour garlic dill pickles, a crock of lactic beets, and my first successful sourdough starter. It is the starter that comes into play in this post, as I used it to make my ever-evolving pizza dough last week which has been aging in my fridge ever since. I threw together a pie for dinner tonight with some preserved red peppers, olives, red onion, and sliced brandywine tomatoes, and though my cellar is stocked with northern Italian reds that would have complimented it nicely, I plucked this puzzler of a brew to see how these “eye-talians” are crafting their outer limits brews these days.

Actually I suppose it’s not fair to call this an outer limits brew, considering the sour red ale has been brewed in the Flanders region of Belgium for hundreds of years. But sour beer from Italy? And aged in Cognac barrels from Bordeaux?! The Panil Brewery is in the Parma region of Italy, home of the best artisinal foodstuffs on the planet, incidentally. If you consult a map, you’ll see that Parma, Bordeax, and West Flanders form a (near) perfect equilateral triangle. Interesting? Yes. Irrelevant? Most likely.

Panil’s Barriquée actually comes in three versions, and this one is the most intense of the three and only available here in the US. It is made rather traditionally like a Flanders Red, with some specialty malts for color and flavor, as well as a deliberate dosing with lactobacillus bacteria to give it that pucker, and a nice rest in some oak barrels. It poured a deep reddish-brown with a fine but fast to fade beige head and had that familiar acetic sourness on the nose along with a pronounced funk from the brettanomyces most likely introduced by the pourus oak during the second fermentation. There are three fermentations including bottle refermentation for those keeping score.

The first sip lets you know that this beer is not playing around. It’s sour for sure, but there is a world of other flavors swirling around that vying for your attention. There’s a bready sweetness most likely from the specialty malts as well as a toasted flavor from the oak which both help to counter the acetic sourness, and there is a milder lactic bite that keeps the acidity from becoming overly sharp. There is also a bevy of tart fruit flavors, from apples to apricots and green grapes. I enjoyed every sip and it got even more complex as it warmed, adding a bit more toasted oak and a farmhouse funk that actually came through as preserved pork, a bit of a Parmesan joke, perhaps?

The beer paired perfectly with the pizza, with the sourness offsetting the saltiness of the cheeses and the brininess of the olives perfectly. The bready and toasty backdrop highlighted the crisp crust and combined with the influence of the lactobacillus and the brettanomyces really helped the cultured flavor of the dough to come through. A lot of the sour beers I’ve been drinking lately, and they are plentiful, are difficult to pair with food. This one is a breeze, however, and a great treat on its own as well. There are an increasing number of great craft beers coming out of Italy and people are starting to take notice, if only you could get this one at Grimaldi’s instead of that godawful Peroni. Actually, I think I’ll just grab a cold one of these and head over to Di Fara, who’s with me?

Avery has decided to keep the intensity a little bit more restrained with the Fifteen, which takes a wild yeast ale base and then adds black mission figs, hibiscus flowers and white pepper. Fifteen pours a nice darkish golden color with a fluffy white head which dissipates quickly and leaves a long trail behind it. The nose is very complex and remains complex throughout the course of the bottle. It has authentic wild Belgian yeast smells going on, with hay, ripe fruits, and other alternatively earthy, sweet, and sour notes coming through. It is a pleasure to sit around and smell this beer and then drinking it is a pleasant surprise. Avery has managed to create one of the first “Infected Session” beers I’ve ever had. It drinks really smooth, with a mild amount of funkiness on the palate, smoothed out by a bit of spicy dryness. This beer had the right kind of body to drink on a moderately warm summer day after work — it wasn’t too thick or syrupy, and the carbonation was at a perfect level for my palate.  I didn’t get much of the fig in there, but man, this beer is drinkable! At 8% ABV, I could definitely handle a few of these — and that’s no surprise considering I really enjoy a wide range of Avery’s beers. For me, this Infected Session was a revelation, and I’ll definitely be going back for more.

Spuyten Duyvil is a bar in Williamsburg, Brooklyn which specializes in Belgian Beer, but has a lot of great selections to offer in general — usually one selection on Cask, 5 or 6 on regular draught, and a ton of amazing bottles to choose from. Since we had some friends in from out of town and were in a celebratory mood, Ceeg and I took John to Spuyten Duyvil and ended up embarking down a road of Lambic delight, sampling three different beers from Hanssens, one of the foremost makers of Gueuze and Lambic in Belgium. “To me,” the very European sounding bartender woman purred, “Hanssens and Cantillon are equally good,” which was enough of an endorsement for me, as I love Cantillon and have enjoyed many of their brews.

I decided to start with the Oude Gueuze, which as reported by the Hanssens website, “…is the result of blending different lambics of different ages. The second fermentation takes place inside the bottles and therefore they are stored for minimum six months in constant temperature kept cellars.” I wanted to try what was essentially the base of the other two Hanssens that they were pouring, the Oude Kriek and the Mead the Gueuze, and I was not disappointed. This is truly the most intense and over the top smelling and tasting beer that I have ever had the absolute pleasure to sip outside in the backyard of a Belgian Beer Bar in my own god-damned home town. Passing the glass around was hilarious, as John and Steve (who had joined us by this point) were shocked at how intense it was, while Ceeg and I couldn’t stop sipping.

The Oude Gueuze pours a beautiful color with a small head and nice carbonation, and has so much intense and intricate sour flavor that it really pushes your face around when you sip. Ceeg had ordered the Oude Kriek, which is the Lambic base refermeted with fresh cherries. This Kriek kicks the living shit out of any heavily sweetened Lambic I have ever had the unfortunate pleasure to pay too much money for. A Lambic is supposed to be more sour than sweet as I understand, and I certainly prefer it this way. While the cherries added a hint of sweetness to counterbalance how intensely sour they are, in addition to the Lambic base they are being added too, the sourness still wins. This beer poured a rich deep ruby color and had the perfect level of carbonation. This was truly a revelatory tasting for us and it was only to get better!

The last bottle they offered (all three are corked and caged like mini-Champagne bottles and had varying degrees of insane funk collected on them from years of storage and aging) was the most out there of all — “Mead The Gueuze,” which is a mixture of 70% Hanssens Gueuze and 30% Lurgashall Mead. This is seriously one of the most inventive and amazing Belgian (with a little help from the UK — Lurgashall is British) beers I have ever had the pleasure of tasting. It smells like straight up honey and flowers, and adds a bit of spiciness to the traditional Gueuze profile, which is almost always a welcome addition for me. The mouthfeel and taste are just as intense as the smell, and Ceeg and I could hardly believe how smooth and drinkable it was. It’s great to know that old school Brewers are reaching out and collaborating, and this beer is a fantastic result of the kind of cross-pollination that is making drinking beer today so interesting and enjoyable.

I learned a lot about Gueuze and Lambic that night, and I hope to continue to pursue trying as many different styles as I can which come straight from Belgium, while searching the United States for styles that are influenced by these techniques. More on these soon.