Wild Beer Co: Rhubarber (England: Fruit Beer : 6% ABV)
Visual: Dark, cloudy apricot with large white fluffy head.
Nose: Tart rhubarb in an unsweetened fashion. Ground ginger. Ground almonds. Light sulfur. Brown bread.
Body: Stem ginger. Smooth. Custard and vanilla toffee touch. Cream. Lightly tart. Rhubarb. Bitter nuts. Tart grapes. Lactose. Apples. Nutmeg. Salt.
Finish: Rhubarb. Ginger. Solid custard to egg custard tarts – Surprisingly not sweet in that. Salt touch. Lightly earthy. Peppery.
Conclusion: Well, this is a lot less sweet that I expected. Now, I did expect the rhubarb to be unsweetened rather than in a dessert pie fashion – and I got that right – it is tart and very robust. I was impressed with the amount of rhubarb character – previous rhubarb beers I tried had very light to no rhubarb influence while this just booms with its tart, dry, earthy and peppery character.
Anyway, back to the lack of sweetness. There are custard like notes, as mentioned on the bottle in fact, kind of in a solid egg custard tart kind of way, but kind of dry in that – like the custard has been under sugared or something. I don’t know of any actual custard that exists that tastes hat exact way, but that is the imagery the beer creates.
Instead of custard sweetness this emphasizes the earthiness along with the ginger spice to give a real spicy, peppery, ginger, earthy kick – warming and robust over the smooth, slightly creamy textured body. Late on and into the finish it gains a light salt touch that calls to the gose style and which works well at reinforcing these spicier elements.
This character dominates most of the beer, until it finally starts to let up slightly at the end where it relaxes and some soft green fruit comes out. It is a final salty sweet final release from the heavier notes.
So, thus far I have generally been descriptive – it is an unusual beer so I thought it deserved a bit more of an examination of what it before I dive into how well it worked. It is pretty good actually. There your mind is set at rest now. It is very specific in what it does – with the unsweetened rhubarb and spice it has limited crowd it will appeal to, but the beer is well textured with the cream hint giving some weight, has very big flavor layered over that and reins in the elements just enough that it does not feel harsh despite the big ginger influence.
So, a beer dedicated to the idea very much, like a rhubarb gose meets a general rhubarb sour that has been rinsed through a ginger patch. Very earthy, very robust – a work a try definitely for rhubarb fans, but definitely not an everyday beer.
Background: I bought this because it has rhubarb in it. That simple. I used to try and get most, if not all of the Wild Beer Co brews that come out, as I love their experimentation, even if they don’t always hit the mark. However the glut of high quality beers out recently from many different breweries meant I have had to cut back on that recently. I grabbed this though. Because rhubarb. It is made with **quick glance at the bottle** wheat, oats, brown sugar, forced rhubarb, tonka beans and stem root ginger. Fair chunk of stuff there. A quick google tells me forced rhubarb is rhubarb grown away from light to encourage it to grow. Which I never knew. Grabbed from Independent Spirit and drunk while listening to a mix of History Of Guns tracks. Big fan of HOG, from their more electronic really grimy downbeat tracks, to their angrier guitar work, to the just plain weird stuff they turn out.
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