I grew a little bored of tasting
sessions and posts for beers after the full voracity of the Advent Calendar
saga. However, occasionally some evenings deserve special mention and credit,
as do the beers sampled at such times.
For this reason, I’ve decided to
write up my experience tasting a box of Wild Beer Co’s creations the other
evening. Wild Beer Co. were a brewery that created a lot of hype around blogs
and the social media long before their beers ever seemed to hit the shelves.
Being the miserable cynic that I often am, this made me sceptical, and
initially resentful, towards them. I find it shallow and naïve when I see
fellow enthusiasts or bloggers hyping up a brewery or brew so much before
tasting has even occurred. To me, it is just for those that are easily fooled
into marketing schemes and ploys; the sort of humans you would find switching
insurance every 3 months because a new species of talking animal told them to
in the Coronation Street break.
I don’t blame the brewery for
this; in fact I admire their shrewd use of social media in creating the buzz.
I love their packaging design and mission statement and my interest too was tweaked by the marketing. I’ve written before about my love for Millstone Brewery but my regret/admiration
that they don’t even have so much as a Twitter page. They’ve still been
consistently making bitter and hoppy pale ales to rival many of these new
“craft” brews without fuss for many a year. Still, perhaps another post
dedicated to that particular subject will come on a different day.
For now, let me just recount my
only experience with Wild Beer so far. It came in the form of their Modus
Operandi, a beer I had seen frequently praised over Twitter, often under the
heading of “my favourite beer this year,” or “my current go-to beverage.”
Through this high praise, I chose to fork out for a bottle at Port Street at
their birthday celebrations recently. Alas, I had the beer towards the end of
the night, when taste had stopped mattering and my cynicism was in full flow. I
remember not being overly impressed, but then I couldn’t tell you now what it
tasted like at all.
Anyhow, the reason for a tasting
session arose through a competition I “won” (I was the only entry) through Beer
Ritz’s website. A box of Wild Beer landed in the office at work one day, much
to my surprise and merriment. Two bottles each of Wild Beer’s Fresh, Scarlet
Fever and Madness IPA. I was thrilled to get the chance to sample these beers
and did so over the course of a single evening, leading to this tasting event.
Fresh – 5.5%
I believe this bottle to be from
Batch 1. Drink Fresh – Don’t Age, this beer commands, and I enjoy the
authority. It smells of your favourite barley wine mixed with rose wine, sticky
sweet with a buttery biscuit base and a drizzle of maple syrup over it. There’s
no doubting when this beer is tasted that the name affects your judgement. It’s
fresh. Crisp and clean are the only adjectives that spring to mind, like a
freshly picked lettuce leaf. This is barbeque drinking beer for the more
assertive. It doesn’t need the intellectual to break down the flavours here.
It’s a complicated flavour that just marries together into a unity so simple
but clean… fresh! I love it.
Scarlet Fever – 4.8%
Sometimes I redraft my tasting
notes but for Scarlet Fever I would like to present them in their rawest form
as written at the time, as I enjoy seeing my initial thoughts: Much darker than
Fresh, as it’s a gorgeous crimson, thick, red wine-esque beaut, my initial
scent of this beer made me think I'd love it as it smelt of a big, hoppy
American red ale, one of my favourite styles. But immediately this descends
into something else, rather peculiar, I can't quite put my finger on it. It's
one of those occasions I need a second opinion present to help and just don't
have one. It's an almost meaty quality, like Chinese pork, yes honey and ginger
pork, with a definite lambic cherry finish. It's exciting and strange. The
taste is massive and crazy. Dark, sweet, cherry like fruits with a great boozy
undertone yet ridiculously smooth. There's so much great flavour but, with a
strength of just 4.8%, there's no burn or hurt in quaffing. Again, the hop hit
is a zingy bitter finish that isn't dry and avoids giving you heartburn (as
some would claim.) I can't think of another beer available that is comparable.
Terrific and original stuff.
Madness IPA – 6.8%
This doesn’t make a great initial
impression. There’s little on the nose but a strange acridic underlay that is
close to being unpleasant. But taste wise, it is anything but. This has all the
character of a modern IPA - bouncy citrus hops, lovely tropical fruitness and
sweet, tongue tickling bitterness, like a pineapple smoothie made on a beach
shack in the Bahamas. It sings along your throat and laps against your tongue
repeatedly with such cleanliness. I forgot for a moment that I was drinking a
"Wild" beer so don't mind commenting that there is something sour in
the aftertaste that is pleasant, because I wasn't searching for it. But this is
one of my favourite beers from this year, thusfar.
I am a cynic. I’ve tried to
change, but why deny who I truly am? I frequently look for the negatives
without due consideration. I was wrong to doubt this brewery just because of
the foresight of some on social media. I am pleased that my last blog post was
proven wrong in the very next post, that subjective thoughts are still welcome
in this beery world of ours. Congratulations Wild Beer Co. on a stellar start.
Long may this continue.
And special thanks to Beer Ritz once more. If I learnt nothing else from this experience it's that getting my knickers out will always pay dividends.
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