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.
An outstanding sour ale, whose name, flavor, and the breweries who made it scream summer.
Last Wave says this about the beer:
Raspberry Lemonade Berliner Weisse
This kettle-soured weiss bier is tart, fruity, and red with the help of some raspberry and lemon puree (none of our actual blood), making this a refreshing adult beverage ripe for enjoyment at the Jersey Shore. Brewed in collaboration with our friends at Heavy Reel Brewing Co.
Last Wave recently celebrated their fifth anniversary and did a slight rebranding of their logo / can art aesthetic and released a couple of collaboration beers. Although I missed those beers, I’d been keeping an eye on Last Wave’s releases and saw an intriguing Instagram post announcing the re-release of this beer, Surfer’s Blood. With the summer in full swing, I wanted something sweet, tart, and with some fruit element to the beer; Surfer’s Blood fit that criteria perfectly.
The beer that pours into my glass from the can is pinkish in color and could easily pass as pink lemonade. That makes sense given the Last Wave labels this as a “Raspberry Lemonade Sour.” Aroma is a little bit of that raspberry lemonade, too.
I take a sip and I’m delighted. This is damned tasty beer. There’s a lot of tart and tanginess from the raspberries and lemons/lemonade, but enough carbonation and maltiness to keep this in the beer category. The tartness / sour elements also come from the yeast that gives a Berliner Weisse (even without adjuncts) its characteristic funky profile.
You’ve got two shore breweries collaborating on this beer, you’ve got “surfer” in the title, a surfing skeleton on the label, and delicious refreshing fruity flavor (specifically lemonade, maybe the most iconic summer beverage) in the beer. Yeah, this is a great summer beer. It has been a popular seasonal for Last Wave and I can taste why. I had a second can on a warm Sunday afternoon lounging in my pool after some yard work and the beer tasted even better and went down much more quickly in gulps, rather than sips. Maybe the only better place/way to enjoy this beer is on the beach.
I love the can art, it speaks to the horror junkie in me with the bloody skeleton, which is kind of the mascot of Heavy Reel brewing. the new “branding” Last Wave kicked off in May, which put a nice “frame” around the art topped off with Last Wave’s surf board logo brings the eye-popping design together. Surfer’s Blood is very appealing both from the taste and packaging, if you saw this beer on the shelf and wanted a sweet summer crusher, you’d have to pick up at least a four-pack.
The classic Berliner Weisse is crisp, cloudy, and sour. Once the most popular beer style in Berlin, it’s gained notoriety and popularity around the globe making us all proud to be Berliners. That’s 30 different beers with the style of Berliner Weisse.
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.
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.
Sunsets are kind of a West Coast thing. We look for the Sunrise on the East Coast, signaling another day. This beer honors those that forgo a little extra sleep to chase their passion and rise with the sun. Dawn Patrol is a light, tart beer that gets its flavor from a simple grain bill, a light souring, pureed pink guava, and like most great things from the Jersey Shore—a touch of salt. It’s a refreshing brew that’s fruity, a little funky, and ready to go for your next summer get-together—no matter the time of day.
I’ve been wanting to try one of Last Wave’s beers for a while now, especially since I’ve been seeing their beer in distribution in my area. Well, let me revise that statement. I’ve had a beer which was a collaboration with Icarus Brewing, so I wanted to sample their “solo” brewing efforts. Warm weather is a good time for fruited Goses so here we are with Dawn Patrol. Last Wave is based on one of NJ’s great Shore Towns, Point Pleasant Beach, so many of their beers (like this one) have a beach/ocean themed name.
”But what about the beer, Rob?” readers typically ask at this point. Let’s dive into it, then.
The beer pours quite cloudy, which is largely on par for the course with Gose beers. Not much color from the guava, maybe a very slight tint of pink? The aroma is a little funky, which is to be expected from the style. So far, so good.
My first impression of the taste is a little tart, a little sweetness, a slight hit from the salt on the finish. Again, pretty much in line for the style. The sweetness, of course, comes from the Guava and is a nice balance to the inherent tartness of the style. The guava isn’t too overpowering, it brings a welcome element of refreshment to the beer. I’ve got fond memories of freshly squeezed guava juice from when my wife and I spent our honeymoon in Hawaii and the guava elements in this beer definitely stoke the flames of those memories.
One of the characteristics of a Gose, compared to many other sours and fruited sours in particular, is the salinity. The Gose style of beer originated in Leipzig, Germany, a region noted for water high in salinity. As such, brewers have tried to evoke that salty/balanced finish when crafting beer in the Gose-style. That saltines is present here in Dawn Patrol and of course evokes the saltiness one might feel and taste in the air on the beach, so on many levels, Last Wave has done something quite nice with this beer.
While I thoroughly enjoy this beer and can imagine it being perfect on a warm day, I think I would like Dawn Patrol even more if the hallmark elements of the beer and style would be a little more assertive. A slight increase of the tartness and salty finish would elevate a very good beer to a great beer. Like I said, I’m nit-picking because I like the beer quite a lot. This beer is be perfect for drinkers who may be averse to sour styles because of the approachability and overall flavor profile of Dawn Patrol has the elements of the style, but not to amped up monstrous levels. In other words, I’d say this is a “successful” beer for Last Wave Brewing Co.
I’m not sure how widely Last Wave is distributing within New Jersey, but I suspect one would only have success finding this beer within the Garden State. What Dawn Patrol has done for me is this: I’m intrigued to try more beer from Last Wave Brewing.
A Sour beer on Untappd is any beer with a style of the following: American Wild Ale, Lambic, or Sour.
Right about now you’re feeling your face tighten and your taste buds explode. The full pucker is quickly setting in and you can’t get enough. This is the wonder of the sour.
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.
Our heavily fruited, lightly salted, Gose returns! Fruitastic Voyage is brewed with Lactose and a touch of Fleur de Sel before being conditioned on double the amount of fruit as our Acid Blend series. For this newest batch, we conditioned this beer on an absurd amount of Mango Purée+Orange Purée+Peach Purée for a refreshing, over-the-top, fruit forward drinking experience. Come along and ride on a fruitastic voyage! // Lightly tart with notes of soft fleshy peaches, ripe mango, yellow Starbursts, and balancing salt.
Brix City in Little Ferry, NJ has gained a reputation over their last five years of being in business for brewing flavorful, fruited sour ales and Hazy IPAs. When I visited the brewery (on my Birthday in November) it was sunny and unseasonably warm in the 70s or 80s. When I saw this Gose on draft, I was very happy because the style is a great warm weather beer for enjoying outside with friends, which just so happened to describe the day exactly.
When the beer arrived, I wouldn’t have immediately pegged the beer as a Gose, it looked like an extremely hazy IPA or an unfiltered beer. When I passed the beer in front of my nose, I smelled some funk and fruit aromas from the beer, which disabused my initial notion that this is an IPA.
Image courtesy of Brix City’s facebook
The first sip tells me I made the correct decision to start the day with this beer. Huge fruit flavors assert themselves off the bat. Mango is one of my favorite fruits and Mango, in my taste buds, seems to be the most dominant of the three fruits. The peach is also prominent as well, but the two stone fruits complement each other very nicely any time they are paired together. The orange is subtle, but the acidic nature of that fruit, I think, brings a good balance to the sweet mango and peach.
In the description above, Fleur de Sel is called out as a brewing component, which sounds very fancy. I only just discovered that Fleur de Sel is salt and while I don’t get the level of salinity in this beer that I’ve tasted in other Gose/Gose-style ales, I think the salt is another additional balance on the fruit. Which makes Fruitastic Voyage almost a reverse Gose since salinity in the traditional Gose as brewed in Leipzig Germany is a natural component of the region’s water. Here the salt is added and I’m going to guess it was added so that the extremely copious levels of fruit in the beer are balanced and not cloying..
However the folks at Brix City achieved the end product that is this beer, it was successful. This version of Fruitastic Voyage with Mango, Orange, and Peach, is a knockout of a beer. I’d call it a Gose turned up to eleven and since this is a series of beers, I’ll definitely be seeking out the other fruited variants of this beer. The only other thing I’ll note about this beer is the ABV at 6.5% is a little higher than most Gose I’ve had which have largely been below 5% ABV. Not a negative point against the beer, just worth noting that it follows the theme of Brix hewing to their own path while also brewing an old world style.
I’ve only had 5 total beers from Brix over the years so based on this beer (and the Get Puft IPA I had during my visit), I really need to seek out their beers more often. Fortunately, their beers are often in the refrigerator at the liquor stores near me.
First brewed in the early 16th century, this peculiar flavored beer has made quite the come back. With a tart, salty combination, your taste buds are probably still tingling… and excited for more!
German-Style Summer Ale Conditioned on Tart Cherry Juice from King Orchards of Michigan.
Refreshing and tart with a balanced Cherry and cracker-like malt backbone, simple yet well defined, we’ve never brewed a beer this perfect for the Summer before, and we hope you agree..
This past weekend, Neshaminy Creek Brewing was hosting the Trenton Punk Rock Flea Market. My wife and I went, having had a good time when visited the Flea Market in the past when they set up in (shocker!) Trenton. With Trenton being just a short ride over a bridge to Pennsylvania, the Flea Market has set up shop at Neshaminy Creek Brewing in Croydon, PA in the past. So, considering how much I’ve enjoyed Neshaminy Creek’s beers and the Flea Market had a day set in August at Neshaminy Creek Brewing, we knew we were going. I also knew I was going to walk out of there with something to take home. Keeping with a theme of lower ABV beers I’ve been following, I grabbed a four pack of this beer upon my wife’s suggestion. She knows I like the style and figured it would be a good summer beer. She doesn’t drink beer, but she’s extremely observant of what I like and when I ramble on about beer.
Short story: my wife was right about the beer. Long story: let me expand upon that.
I’ve had my fair share of Berliner Weisses, about 20, not nearly as many as I’ve had of Pilsner, Stouts, or IPAs. But enough to have a good idea of what I like in the style, what to expect. That’s just a precursor for where I come from when it comes to the style.
There was a huge pop when I cracked open the can. The funk aroma coming of the beer was welcome and gave me an indication that this beer was crafted fairly well. The beer pours out a reddish pink, which is exactly as expected given the beer was made with cherries. So far, so good.
First sip is potent, tart cherry. Maybe the most tart of any beer I’ve had with cherries. The yeast and acidic bacteria at play in the beer likely enhanced the natural tartness of the cherries. This is all good.
The tartness lingers throughout the progression of the flavors, but becomes less pronounced once the sweetness takes over. This beer is supremely tart, but extremely flavorful aside from the tartness. Fortunately, the tart/sour components don’t overpower the other flavor elements even they if are the most prominent elements of the beer. Many Berliner Weisse beers have some kind of sweet fruit – or traditionally in Berlin, a sweet syrup is added as I pointed out in my feature on the style – to balance the tartness. Using a fruit that exhibits both components – very sweet and tart, is a fine way to hew along that tradition and plays well into the base elements of the beer.
I probably should have let the beer sit in the fridge or on ice a little longer than I did, I was too eager to try it. Although the beer came from a fridge at the brewery, that fridge was constantly being opened and closed as the brewery was VERY packed with people, customers who were buying cans of beer, so the beer wasn’t at optimal coldness to begin with AND I’m about an hour drive from the brewery. Long story short (too late), I may have enjoyed it more were it colder, and it may have taken a little longer to warm outside if the beer was colder when I poured it. Be that as it may, the beer was still quite good.
I wanted to give this beer the full chance to shine, so I had a second can the following day. Just like the first can, it popped big time, the sugars and yeast making for quite a bit of pressure and a big fluffy head. I tasted even more than what I expected from the interpretation of the style – the tartness of the cherries popped a little more and carbonation was more fizzy. Both pleasing elements of the beer. It isn’t a beer you can chug (and really, who wants to chug a beer with this much flavor!), but with the low ABV, it is a flavorful ale with a low enough ABV (3.5%) that having three in quick succession would likely not knock you on your rear end.
Neshaminy Creek Brewing Company’s highest profile beers are their IPAs, particularly The Shape of Hops to Come, one of the most acclaimed Imperial IPAs from the East Coast. However, in Cherry Berlinerweisse, Neshaminy Creek has brewed a flavorful, sour & tart Germanic inspired ale that shows off a similar level of complexity and a beer well-suited to warm weather and poolside sipping (as my picture above shows).
Neshaminy Creek has always had very eye-catching artwork on their cans and when they did a “rebrand” earlier in the year, they reached out to their longtime artist JP Flexner to help out. The art on the can below is shows a battle between (I’m guessing) the yeast, lactic acid bacteria, and cherries that give the beer its complex flavor all tamed by a brave undersea diver who just might be a brewer.
Cool can, tasty beer. What more do you need?
Neshaminy Creek Brewing Company’s beers are available in PA, NJ, MD, and DE.
Tart red raspberries are the star of this refreshing show. A first fermentation with lactobacillus gives this beer its pucker, while a second pass with our house ale yeast produces soft, fruity esters. A hint of Himalayan pink salt amplifies the flavor of tart raspberry jam, and coriander adds delicate notes of wildflowers.
We taste: tart raspberry jam, wildflowers, hint of salt
Tröegs gets quite a lot of love here on the Tap Takeover, a personal top 4 brewery in 2018 plus fairly frequent appearances in my monthly Six Packs. However, it has been almost two years since I reviewed one of their beers. This past year; however, Tröegs started a new beer series in the same way they have a Hop Cycle for their quarterly/seasonal IPA. This new series is their take on Goses and Gose-adjacent beers, the Tart & Fruit Series.
Image courtesy of Tröegs web site
Popping open the can, I get a whiff of raspberry and some of the tartness resulting from the lactobacillus. The picture above doesn’t do justice to the reddish hue coming off the beer. Since pictures can’t convey smell, either, you can’t smell sweet and tart aroma from the raspberries.
I taste raspberries immediately, but not an overpowering assault on the senses. Sometimes raspberries can do that and dominate whatever thing they are in, be it dessert, beer, or any food. While definitely a dominant flavor component, other elements of the beer do come to the fore.
The description calls out coriander and the flavor of wildflower, maybe that sweetness balances out the tartness of the raspberries and the lactobacillus but they weren’t distinct flavor components in and of themselves.
The finish of the beer has the characteristic salinity for which Goses are known, and probably the component I liked best. Don’t get me wrong, I liked the raspberries and they are the star of the show here, but the “Himalayan Pink Sea Salt” is the ingredient that brings the beer home and gives it that pleasant Gose characteristic.
Image courtesy of Tröegs website
This Raspberry Tart Ale was part of a seasonal mix pack for the summer, Greetings From Tröegs (15 beers comprised of 3 cans of 5 varieties), along with a Helles Lager I’ve been wanting to try for more than a year, but the beer is also available in six packs. I can see myself getting a sixer of this and trying to track down the first beer in this series, the Boysenberry Tart Ale.
I haven’t had as many Goses as other styles that I like this much (i.e. Bocks, Stouts, etc), but this one – Raspberry Tart Ale from Tröegs – definitely ranks near the top of not just the recent Goses I’ve had, but all of them. It is a reminder that I need to go for the style more often because the style is super refreshing and has several enjoyable flavor elements – sweet, tart, salty, and beer. Tröegs has shown expertise with several styles, IPAs, of course, as well as darker beers, barrel-aged wild beers and now Gose.
First brewed in the early 16th century, this peculiar flavored beer has made quite the come back. With a tart, salty combination, your taste buds are probably still tingling… and excited for more!
Beret is as artistic as those who wear its namesake cap. Our brewers developed a silky, full-bodied wheat ale which we began fermenting with a Belgian-style witbier yeast strain. To finish the fermentation, we added our collection of barnyard bacteria, intended to slowly sour the ale, bringing out a slight funk and refreshing piquancy. Finally, a small dose of pureed raspberries were added for just a hint of fruity tannins, putting the berry in Beret.
I’ve had a few of the big beers from The Bruery, but before enjoying Beret, I think I only had a taste of Bruery Terreux beer at a beer festival. As their twitter profile inidicates, Bruery Terreux is “The sour & wild side of Famille Rue. Crafting wildly traditional bière alongside The Bruery.” After enjoying Beret, I will be having more of their beers. As I’ve come to enjoy sour beers more and more, I wanted to try one of these big sour beers from California. The range of styles within Sour beers is quite wide and Bruery Terreux seem to brew them all. In the end, I was drawn to Beret were the approachable price of about $15 (some of their 750ml beers range well above $20) and the fruited flavor of raspberry.
The beer pours a cloudy/hazy yellowish-pink. It looks a bit like a fruited hefeweizen/witbier to me, which I suppose makes sense since the beer began as a wheat ale. It has that spongy aroma most Goses do for me. I’m not sure why I use the word spongy, but that imagery pops up in my head. I like Goses so on the whole, and Berliner Weisses as well, so I like where this beer is going on looks and aroma alone.
That first taste is slightly sweet with lots of that spongy sour-tartness. There’s a lot of funkiness, too, the flavor moves around a bit from sweet to tart, but settles down once the raspberry joins in the flavor party. I had this beer on ice to get it cold, which turned out to be too cold. The complexities of the flavor from the chemistry that happens with the ingredients from the wheat to the yeast to the raspberry become more prominent as the beer warmed up.
For my palette’s sensibilities, I would have enjoyed the beer a little bit more if the raspberry was a more assertive and pronounced. A little more sweetness would have been welcome. I wonder how the same beer would taste with a slightly sweeter fruit like peach.
On the whole, Beret is a fairly approachable sour ale – it would be a good beer for people unsure of whether they enjoy sours to try. That, coupled with the lower price point compared to many offerings from The Breury or Bruery Terreaux, makes Beret one to potentially share with a friend who is curious about sour beers.
Right about now you’re feeling your face tighten and your taste buds explode. The full pucker is quickly setting in and you can’t get enough. This is the wonder of the sour. That’s 55 different Sour Beers.
Hopped Down (Level 67)
One cannot live on dank hops alone. Tone down the bitterness and enjoy some smooth flavor. That’s 335 different beers with an IBU of 20 or below.
Draught Diversions is the catchall label for mini-rants, think-pieces, and posts that don’t just focus on one beer here at The Tap Takeover. We hope you don’t grow too weary of the alcohol alliterative names we use…
Since I reviewed a Berliner Weissbier earlier in the week (White Birch Raspberry Berliner Weisse), I figured I write about the style in more detail. As the name would imply, the style originated in Germany like many styles of beer, Berlin specifically. As it so happens, the previous two styles upon which I focused originated in Germany, too (Bock and Dunkelweizen). I didn’t quite plan that, but clearly my leanings towards German styles is more evident than ever. Be that as it may, the “Weisse” is a reference to the color of the beer, often a pale white, and not the wheat. When served at breweries in Germany, the Berliner Weissebier is traditionally served with sweet syrup; (and likely still is) Raspberry and Woodruff for Red or Green respectively. Woodruff is a flower extract whose syrup is also used for brandy, jelly and soft drinks. I had a couple at local breweries (Jughandle and Flounder) and both offered Raspberry, as well as Lemon and Elderflower syrups.
Although some breweries have the beer as part of the year-round portfolio, the beer is a great summer style as evidenced by the seasonal nature of probably the most well-known Berliner Weisses produced in the US, Dogfish Head’s Festina Peche. It is also one of the most long-standing beers in their line-up, appearing annually in the summer since 2007. It has been too long since I’ve had this one, but I could go on about Dogfish for quite a long time.
I like to think of the Berliner Weissbier as a cousin to the (currently) more popular and prevalent Gose style ale. As I said in my review this week, both are sour ales with German roots, both have some wheat component in their malt bill and most varieties of both have some kind of fruit additive to balance out the sour and tart nature of the beer. One of the primary differences is that most, if not all, Gose beers have salt added to the brewing process where the Berliner Weisse typically does not have the salt. I like both styles quite a bit, but if I were to hand a person unacquainted with sour beers, or even wary of sour style, one to try, it would definitely be a Berliner Weisse. It is more approachable and less face-puckering than a Gose.
Dear Victory Brewing: Please bring this beer back
For the Berliner Weissbiers I’ve had and seen in bottles/cans, many have had some kind of fruit syrup/puree flavoring component. A couple of years ago, one of my favorite breweries, Victory Brewing, brewed and bottled a Berliner Weisse as part of their experimental Blackboard series which was brewed with Elderflower. I would love for this to make some kind of return from Victory. One of NJ’s iconic breweries, River Horse, brews a tasty Cherry Berliner Weisse, too.
Some other Berliner Weissbiers I’d like to try:
Boulevard Berliner Weisse – A pretty straightforward interpretation of the style, but without any fruit addition
Carton Brewing’s Monkey Chased the Weasel – As the name implies from the old nursery rhyme “Pop Goes the Weasel” (or the 3rd Bass song), this beer is brewed with Mulberries
Berliner Kindl Weisse mit Schuss Himbeere – This is the raspberry/red version picture at the top of the post and probably the brewery that most often comes up on a google search for “Berliner Weisse”
The Bruery’s offshoot brewery, Bruery Terreux®, brews many sour ales, with quite a few fruited Berliner Weissbiers so I’ll go with Frucht: Boysenberry
Like the great majority of beer from The Bruery/Bruery Terreux®, this beer is available only in 750ml bottles and draft
Last year and a few weeks ago, I wrote about summer beers and I touched on a couple of Gose beers, but I now realize Berliner Weisse style should have received some attention and at least one slot in the 2018 Summer Sixpack. One of the best-selling and best rated beers over the last couple of years is Dogfish Head’s SeaQuench Ale, a beer lauded for how thirst-quenching it is. Although categorized as a Gose on untappd, SeaQuench happens to be a blend of three German styles including Berliner Weisse.
I’ll end it with this – give a Berliner Weisse a try if you happen upon one in your local brewery, see one on draft at your favorite bar/taproom, or if you see one on the shelves of your bottle shop. It is a classic style with much appeal and with an ABV often below 5%, it shouldn’t set you off your rocker too much..
The Tap Takeover 