Lemke Berlin: Yellow Sub Sour (Germany: Sour Ale: 5.4% ABV)
Visual: Hazy lemon yellow, with a massive mounded white head.
Nose: Wheaty with peppery bitterness. Slight brown bread.
Body: Lemon to lemon curd. Tart apples and pears. Pineapple. Vanilla. Light toffee. Moderate thick texture. Passion fruit. Light chalk. Peach syrup. Fizzy.
Finish: Pear drops. Pineapple. Fresh. Peach syrup. Brown bread. Pink grapefruit. Lactose to yogurt.
Conclusion: This is a lot thicker than I was expecting – it has a lemon curd to yogurt sort of grip for the usually quite dry sour style. It gives a very different intensity and flavor range to what I was expecting going into this – when I found out they called this a “sour milk ale” that made a bit more sense of this, I’m guessing they are using lactose or similar to add a thicker feel to the beer.
Initially, when chilled down, it still leads with fresh tartness that sours are well know for – giving lemon, apple and pear drop notes that give a freshness to the thicker grip. As it warms and the more yogurt side of the feel comes it it gives more grip to the sweeter peach and passion fruit notes. At this point I had definitely realised that this wasn’t your standard sour. It has what, for lack of a better word, I will call a more standard “beer” set of flavours – more traditional hop flavours I guess, matched with a tartness that the more traditional beer style couldn’t bring.
It is very fruity, very fresh, and the grip of the texture not only brings that huge amount of flavour, but also makes it far easier to drink for someone not used to the average sour style. I like it, I like it a lot.
It’s odd to call such an unusual character as having a “More standard beer set of flavours” I know, but in a way it does. Well, more standard for a craft beer anyway, if such words make sense. Lots of tropical fruit flavours- just done fresh, acidic and tart as can be, instead of delivered in an IPA style.
Easy to appreciated, tons of depth and easy to drop into a session without hurting beers coming after it. A very good sour ale for more occasions than you would think a sour could match. In fact, it feels like what Bonaparte wanted to be.
Well worth grabbing if you can.
Background: After the dried hopped Berlinner Weisse had oop north, I was surprised, on googling this, to find out it is another dried hop sour. In this case a dry hopped sour milk ale, according to untapped. Which is an odd set of words to get together. Another beer grabbed from the awesome bottle shop that was Craft Beer Kontor in Hannover. So many beers I wanted, so few I could actually get safely back into the UK. This is one of the three I grabbed and brought back. Anyway, drunk while listening to a bunch of metal covers on youtube – mainly Jonathan Young.
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