Brewdog: Brodies: Southside Zester (England: Berliner Weisse: 3.7% ABV)
Visual: Cloudy lemon juice. Small white head that is mainly clumps around the edges and leaves trails.
Nose: Key lime – tangy. Buttery shortbread. American cheesecake. Kiwi.
Body: Tart. Squeezed lime. Light dry oak. White wine. Apple cider. Passion fruit.
Finish: Squeezed lime. Vanilla. Soft lemon. Pears. twigs. Passion fruit.
Conclusion: Brodies do great sours. Lime makes for a good sour. This rocks. Ok, that is the short review for people with no attention spans. This is like key lime pie, the musical … or more correctly, key lime pie, the beer, but you get my point.
It is tangy but not harsh, sour but soft. It has elements not entirely unlike the drier, less sweet American style cheesecakes, or like buttery shortbread. That is used as a base, then shot full of squeezed lime which just sparkles.
Unusually for a sour, and probably due to the softer nature, the almost holographic range of flavours you get with a lot of sours are not present here. Instead it is more carefully shaped into cider tartness at the height of the intensity – a more mellow but still refreshing high point. The drier points go towards twigs and dry passion fruit, keeping the dry grounding and still quite fruity. It is refreshing, deep and rounded – the lime is the perfect match for the sour.
If you could bottle this it would be basically bottled summer joy, calling to imagery of hot South America days drinking, German Brauhaus, and English bush filled fields. Lovely.
Background: Collabfest! 2014! WOO MOTHERFUCKERS! I like collabfest. Every brewdog bar does a collaboration beer with a local brewery then they are all put on at all the bars. Last year I managed all 12 in one day. This year, with there being 16 now, I had to pace myself. So I will going back to try and grab the ones I missed. Anyway, this one is also called “Livin’ La Vida Lime Juice”. Due to the amount of beers I kept to thirds, for obvious reasons. My later in the day reviews may be slightly incomprehensible…
