Wild Beer Co: The Blend: Summer 2015 (England: Sour Ale: 4.7% ABV)
Visual: Hazy lemon juice. Lots of small bubble carbonation. A thin white head.
Nose: Horse blankets. Oatmeal. Apples. Vanilla. Dry pear.
Body: Sherbety. Sour lime. Tart apples. Lightly creamy. White grapes. White wine. Light funky yeast feel. Dry. Grapes. Apricot. Dried banana.
Finish: Brown gummed envelopes and vinegar. Cider and white wine. Acid feel at back of throat. Vanilla.
Conclusion: So, the blend. It is here. Wild Beer Co have done an impressive range of sour beers over the years, and now they have enough to mix up this. Something special? Maybe. let’s see how it does.
Well it wears its lambic influence on its sleeves. It should hardly be surprising considering how the mixing of ages of sour beers is very much a lambic tradition. This shares that horse blanket aroma character, it has the same white wine styling on the body as well. Like a lot of Wild Beer Co beers however it does have that slight cider apple side to it that gives it a touch of its own character.
It is nice enough, maybe a bit hard on the more vinegar acidic touches considering the softer flavours, but not bad. It is refreshing, dry and drinkable. However, in emulating the lambic styling it is going head to head with them and, well, compared to those it doesn’t come off as well. It doesn’t match the ease of drinking of the softer end of the scale, nor the complexity of the higher end.
Now, that does not mean it is not pleasant, it is that and it does work better as it warms up a bit, more fruity – with more apricot. When the acidity isn’t too high the softer vanilla works well also. It bodes well on if they can build on that as a solid base, bring up the rest of the beer to match. They intend to keep turning out editions of this as they get more sour stock, and this is an ok start. As long as they treat this as a base to improve on then it could end up with a very nice beer. As of right now it feels like an entry level lambic with some cider touches.
Let’s see what future years brings.
Background: Wow, Wild Beer Co has been going three years? Seems like no time whatsoever. Anyway, now they have enough of a backlog of brewed sour beers that they can blend various aged versions of it into this, “The Blend”. I am a fan of their sour beers, so this looked interesting. Drink while listening to Iron Maiden’s new album – Book of Souls which has been good so far, but no one individual track seems to stand out as much. Still nice metal backing to sour drinking. The wax wasn’t too bad to get off on this one, thankfully. This was bought from Independent Spirits.
