This came to my attention when I opened a bottle of Supplication, very kindly delivered by Chris and Merideth when they visited Dublin in December. The long description of the labour-intensive production method loses some of its wow-factor by being presented in a typeface more suited to the noticeboard in a primary school. Only a little, though: Supplication, we're told, starts life as a brown ale which is then soured with lambic yeast and bacteria strains and left to mature in pinot noir barrels with some cherries for company.It strikes me as a rather more contrived process than traditional Belgian lambic brewing, but the result speaks for itself: this is every bit as tasty as the best of sour Belgian beer. Rather than the saltpetre nitrousness I'm more used to, the tartness is based more on an old damp wood flavour, deriving presumably from the oak barrels, though it's not something I've ever noticed in a wood-aged beer before.
Of course being American it's bigger and brasher than your typical softly-spoken Belgian and the 7% ABV is definitely discernable in the flavour, emphasised by the heavy body and gentle sparkle. The cherries, however, are nowhere to be found.
It does have me wondering if all the careful effort is really worth while: this tastes like a beer where the yeast and bacteria are very much in charge and I wonder how much their paths can be steered through details like barrel type and fruit additions. I suspect that they'll produce the same sort of beer regardless. But it's a lovely beer nonetheless, once you've put the bottle and its inappropriate typeface to one side.
It does sound like an interesting beer, did it finish our dry?
ReplyDeleteI like the sound of it, but if you're gonna use cherries, I want to taste them....but then again I'm unlikely to get a taste of this one anyway.
ReplyDelete@Oblivious No, the finish wasn't dry as such, just a bit of boozy warmth from the malt.
ReplyDelete@Eoin: Agreed on the cherries. Getting fruit beer to taste of fruit after the yeast's been at it can be quite a challenge, I understand.
What batch was it? The drinkable older batches are very funky and tart. I did a vertical with batches 2,3,4 and 6 last month...
ReplyDeleteNot a clue, Sid. I'm guessing it was young.
ReplyDeleteThe batch number will be on the label and you can check to see when it was bottled at the brewery website.
ReplyDeleteIf the batch number isn't in the photo, it's not anywhere else. The bottle has gone to the Great Bottlebank In The Sky. Or the one in the supermarket car park.
ReplyDeleteIt's a later one - 4 or after, from the bottle shape. Too early to say how they'll age but that's academic in this case ;-)
ReplyDeleteI do remember drinking a batch 1 in late 2005, and the smell of the cherries was sufficient to fill a small room. I still think it's one of the best beers I've ever had, perhaps the best.
Everything was better in the old days.
ReplyDeleteThat whole thing is a bit of a design nightmare it would seem. How much stock do you put in visual aesthetics? I thought I recalled reading you being in support of canned beer on the grounds that the vessel didn't really matter.
ReplyDeleteI personally dislike them because they do tend to look soda pop or juice drinks.
No stock at all, but a blog post has to start somewhere.
ReplyDeleteIndeed it does and not a bad place for it. I had a chuckle at the title.
ReplyDeleteRussian River is a brewery of extremes: extremely good reputation among the beer geeks, extremely bad design. Perhaps they take perverse pleasure in the inverse relationship between the two.
ReplyDeleteIn any case, I find Russian River beers on the harsh end of the sour spectrum--America's Cantillion. If you ever have a chance at the sours from Allagash, America's Boon, buy immediately. You know, like the next time you're in Maine.
The very next time, assuredly.
ReplyDeletenice point about all the additions not always adding up to the end product. I guess as a brewer that's the risk you run.
ReplyDelete