Jester King: Spon Rye (USA: Sour Ale: 5.6% ABV)
Visual: Clear pale yellow gold. Very short lived fizzy white head. Only a small amount of visible carbonation.
Nose: Horse blankets. Alpen muesli. Vanilla. Lemon juice. Pepper. Flour.
Body: Tart. Tart apples. Tart grapes. Slight chalk. Tart lemon. Elderflower cordial. Peppery. Dry cider and white wine. White pepper.
Finish: Rye crackers. Tart apples. Dry cider. Elderflower. Petals. White pepper. Sour dough.
Conclusion: I was very interested to see what rye did to a lambic like beer. My main thought was that rye tends to be a very spicy shot added to pretty much anything it is used in, so I was expecting similar big things here. Maybe even a whole new lambic sub genre!
So, then, initially this seemed a lot more standard lambic than I had hoped. There was that horse-blankets style aroma, tart apple cider and white wine like notes. It seemed a fairly standard style, if well done lambic. The rye didn’t seem to have changed that much
Over time it doesn’t change that much, but does gain a kind of elderflower style that you don’t normally see much. It also gain a slight peppery character that is more in line with what you would expect from a rye beer, but it is white pepper so even there not what you would expect from the rye influence. That is the only real spiciness brought to the beer, so a nice set but, yeah nothing near what I was expecting. Guess spontaneous fermentation really changes how rye shows itself.
Overall, and lets put my expectations aside first, it does mix a lot of tart green fruit with drying white wine, pepper – and you do finally get some black pepper late on, but generally the white pepper style, sooo, is that good?
Its solid, the tartness against the pepper works well. There is subtle vanilla sweetness that also helps, and occasionally a more juicy fruit character that balances everything. So, yeah it is good.
It is also take the piss level expensive. At this cost it is going head to head with the creme de la crème of lambics and lambic like beers and while good .. it is not that good.
If the rye made it more unusual I’d say worth it to see what the rye does, as the combination of good and different would probably make it worth it. As is the differences, while there are subtle ones, are not enough to make it a must have. So I would say grab yourself some of the many other amazing lambics out there.
Background: Another one I picked up with my last batch from Grunting Growler. I have been meaning to try Jester King for ages due to their great reputation with sour beers, but they are just a tad expensive. This one did not buck that trend in being costly, but since it was something a bit unusual I thought I would give it a go. Basically this is a lambic style beer, but with a good chunk of rye used to make it, something I was very interested to see what it would do. Went with Vice Squad: Stand Strong, Stand Proud as backing music.
