Sour – Fruited – The Tap Takeover

Beer Review: Fort Nonsense Brewing’s Jaffa the Cake

Name: Jaffa the Cake
Brewing Company: Fort Nonsense Brewing Company
Location: Randolph, NJ
Style: Sour – Fruited
ABV: 8.3%

A delightful, well-balanced sour ale that showcases ingenuity and whimsy.

Fort Nonsense was the subject of one of my early Brewery Spotlights and at the time, I found some things to enjoy, but I was perhaps more critical of the brewery than any other brewery I’d featured before or since. Fast forward four years, the brewery moved to a much larger (and lovely) facility, and their reputation has grown considerably, their sours in particular. So, as has become tradition the past couple of years, my friend and I decided to visit a brewery before enjoying an AEW Pay Per View.

I wasn’t too sure what I was going to have when I arrived at the brewery, there’s no taplist on their website or untappd page, but this one stood out to me on the big board behind the bar. It was different enough and I enjoy the combination of chocolate and orange. The beer is named in one part for a Jaffa Cake (a chocolate and orange confection made with Jaffa oranges) and the other part for Jabba the Hut. The flavor combination as well as the play on words helped to make the beer stand out.

Given the beer is 8.3% ABV, Fort Nonsense only offers the beer in 10oz pours, which is what the beertender handed me. It doesn’t look out of the ordinary, there’s an aroma of orange in the beer. That’s to be expected, but still inviting nonetheless.

That first sip is extremely pleasant. The orange and chocolate are perfectly blended and in harmony with each other. The orange is the initial flavor that comes to the fore, it is pleasant and refreshing. Then comes the chocolate, like a nicely frosted cake or cookie it doesn’t dominate, but accentuates the other flavors. What I appreciate the most is that the beer element is still present, slight hops, some malts.

You may think chocolate is a peculiar ingredient for any beer outside of a stout, but it works so well in Jaffa the Cake. After this second visit to Fort Nonsense and first at their new facility, I’d have to recommend visiting for a nice variety of beer styles. I plan on visiting again in the future.

Recommended, link to 4.25 bottle cap untappd rating check in.

Beer Review: Four City Brewing’s La Baie Noir

Beer Review

Name: La Baie Noir
Brewing Company: Four City Brewing Company
Location: Orange, NJ
Style: Sour – Fruited
ABV: 6%

A superb fruited sour from a NJ brewery who has shown ample talent across nuanced styles.

From the untappd page for the beer:

Sour fans can rejoice! La Baie Noir (French for “the black berry”) is our dark sour brewed with blackberry puree. Tart with a sweet finish, this beer will be a springtime favorite!.

I’ve been eager to try more of Four City’s beers since I visited the brewery during my 2020 Birthday Brewery tour. The people were really chill and the beer impressed me. I was very pleased when a liquor store I frequent started carrying their beer (per my untappd notifications), so I visited and landed on this beer to try, I wanted something a little different. Since I like blackberries this one called out to me quite loudly.

A rather fancy looking can, the beer name in script with a vine of hops on one side of the name, with blackberries on the other. Yup. That tells you what you’ll get.

The beer I pour into the can is quite dark, slightly translucent. From a distance, it looks black, but under the light there’s a purple tint. As dark as this beer is, there’s no mistaking it for a stout or porter. Aroma is potent blackberries, but there’s an underlying funk I’d expect from a sour ale.

My first sip follows the nose. An initial funkiness, which is what I expect from a sour beer. The blackberries come in and take over as the primary flavor element. A balanced amount of blackberries, though. While a this beer probably has ample amounts of blackberry puree, there’s still the underlying sour/tart and funky elements to keep the “backbone” of this adult beverage in the beer category.

The few beers I’ve had from Four City include beers that aren’t the easiest to make and styles that illustrate a brewery’s/brewer’s skill: Belgian Dubbel, Belgian Quadrupel, and this one. Many breweries are making Sour Ales, but many of them are throwing lactose (or cream cheese!) into the beer and overloading the beer with extremely large amounts of fruit or other “non-traditional” adjuncts…smoothie sours that barely resemble beers when poured in the glass. This beer, La Baie Noir, is showcasing great flavors with fewer components and it shows – there’s not much room to hide mistakes and the sour elements and blackberries shine.

I haven’t had too many dark sour beers, especially recently since I’ve come to enjoy sour beers more. I recall one from Carton Brewing and one from New Belgium, but bothe beers were consumed a good handful of years ago so comparing La Baie Noir to those beers isn’t exactly apt. What I can say is that Four City’s Blackberry Sour is an outstanding beer that should please many craft beer drinkers. It isn’t face-puckering sour, but sour enough to establish itself as a sour beer. The blackberry flavor is wonderful. A nice dessert beer, for sure.

Recommended, link to 4.25 bottle cap untappd rating check in.

Untapped badges earned with this beer:

Fruits of Your Labor (Level 19)

It’s been a long day and now it’s time for a reward. Crisp, tasty and refreshing, enjoy that delicious fruit beer! That’s 5 different beers with the style of Fruit Beer, Sour – Smoothie / Pastry, or Sour – Fruited (Gose or Berliner Weisse).

Beer Review: Tart & Thankful – A Collaboration between Highrail Brewing & NJ Craft Beer

Beer Review

Name: Tart & Thankful
Brewing Company: Highrail Brewing in collaboration with New Jersey Craft Beer
Location: High Bridge, NJ
Style: Fruit Beer | Fruited Sour
ABV: 4.9%

A delicious, balanced fruited sour perfect for the autumn/winter seasonal holidays.

From the Facebook post announcing the beer:

Tart & Thankful (4.9%), a bright and cheerful seasonal sour brewed with cranberry. Now available for taproom pours and crowler and growler fills. *A limited supply of 4-packs are also available.*

We collaborated with the team at New Jersey Craft Beer (@NJCraftBeer) to create this Thanksgiving-inspired sour ale. Dosed with Cranberry puree and lightly hopped with Vic Secret, this sour ale hits every mark for a sour and is perfect for sharing at the Thanksgiving feast. Contains lactose. 8 IBU.

I visited High Rail Brewing about two years ago, which was not long after they first opened and enjoyed the beers I had during that visit. When the Hunterdon Beer Trail came to be, I knew I’d be visiting again and that visit was pushed up when the good folks at High Rail collaborated with Mike and the fine people behind New Jersey Craft Beer on this cranberry (one of my favorite fruits) fruited sour.

The beer I’m handed from the draught pour is slightly pinkish. I don’t get too much of an aroma outside of maybe a slight funk as well as the cranberries.

The first sip is really nice, with a noticeably pleasant hit of cranberry.

Halfway through the beer, I’m struck by how well balanced and approachable this beer is. Let me unpack that statement. Some sour beers are very potent, which can potentially be off-putting. Tart & Thankful is far from off-putting, sure it is sour, but damn is it inviting. The sour is a slight tap to the cheek to assert itself. The cranberry element is fairly abundant and the addition of milk sugar/lactose balances out how highly tart cranberry can be. My only issue here is that I wish there was more cranberry. But as I noted above, cranberry is one of my favorite fruits (I drink cranberry juice everyday and love a cranberry smoothie for breakfast) so I may be an outlier.

Tart & Thankful is an outstanding beer, probably the best beer I’ve had categorized as “Fruit Beer” on untappd. As a fruited sour, I love it. It is refreshing, light, clean and overall just about everything I’d want in a beer that has sour elements and cranberries in it. Well done Highrail and New Jersey Craft Beer.

This beer is available only (I think) at the brewery on draft and in cans. Perfect for Thanksgiving, or anytime. It is a beer that is well worth visiting the brewery to enjoy. And while you’re there, enjoy more from Highrail because they make tasty, approachable brews.

Highly Recommended, link to 4.25 bottle cap untappd rating check in.

A delicious, balanced fruited sour perfect for the autumn/winter season.

Beer Review: Bolero Snort’s Mele Kalikimakow

Beer Review

Name: Mele Kalikimakow
Brewing Company: Bolero Snort Brewery
Location: Carlstadt, NJ
Style: Sour – Fruited
ABV: 6.1%

“Bolero Snort’s growing sour beer program produces a tasty and delightful non-standard Holiday beer.”

From Bolero Snort’s blog entry for the beer:

Here’s the island greeting that we send to you, from the land where palm trees sway. This lava flow cocktail inspired sour is loaded with fruit! Sweep the winter blues under the Holiday table and drift away to warmer, poolside days with this blend of Strawberry, Pineapple, Banana and Coconut! Mele Kalikimakow is ideally sipped out of some bull shaped glassware to toast the holiday season right!

This is the third beer I’ve reviewed from Bolero Snort and the third style. Since Scott and Bob opened their gorgeous, enormous facility in the shadow of the Meadowlands Sports Complex late 2019/early 2020, they’ve increased their production output significantly. One area in particular that has seen growth (quantity/variety. sales, and in what people are saying) is their sour beer “program” and this beer is a great example of that.

When thinking of Christmas beers, Belgians and Stouts come to my mind. But with the name of this beer a bovinely inspired play on the Hawai’ian Christmas Song (and National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation), the style and elements of the beer – a fruited sour evoking a Lava Flow cocktail – make a little more sense.

The beer pours very thick with a pinkish hue. It sure looks like a beer playing with the idea of a Lava Flow* cocktail! I get those fruity tropical aromas mixed with the funk of the yeast from the beer, too. So far, seems on point for what the beer is trying to do.

My wife and I went to Hawai’i for our honeymoon and when we landed in Hawai’i after a 10 hour flight plus a 2 hour layover, I had a delicious Lava Flow. Because I was so tired from the 10+ hours travel, it took just one drink to get me a little tipsy!

I’ll admit, the thickness and look of the beer had me questioning my decision. But a sip eroded those doubts.

The beer feels almost as thick as it looks, but fruited sours like this often do. What do I get from the copious flavors outlined above and on the can? While the strawberries lend much of the color and I assume the bananas help with the texture, the pineapple is the front-most flavor out of the cocktail fruits. Fortunately, I thoroughly enjoy pineapple so that works just fine by me.

This isn’t a beer you can our should chug, but it you don’t want to let it warm too much either. As I was continuing to drink through the pint of the beer, the coconut in particular emerged a little more with the strawberries dancing in the background. Carbonation was minimal, but present reminding me that this was indeed a beer.

It seems Bolero Snort accomplished what they set out to do with this beer – it put me in the mindset of enjoying a Pina Colada in beer form. I’ve also been singing Mele Kalikimaka for the past few days.

I will also point out the great can art that captures a scene from the holiday classic National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation. The Bolero Bull is dressed up like Clark Griswold (with added Mariner Moose Egg Nog Glass) during the scene when he’s daydreaming about the pool he’s going have installed thanks to his expected Christmas Bonus.

I suppose the best way for me to describe this beer is that is a fun, playful Christmas inspired beer that is a nice alternative to the traditional Christmas Stouts and Belgian Holiday ales.

Recommended, link to 4 bottle-cap Untappd check-in