Skip to main content

Luciernaga - The Firefly. Make any season a celebration...


As we draw into the latter stages of 2013 and my impending month splurge on festive based beers draws nearer, I’ve been looking to drink the bottles I have in that I want to have as fresh as possible. Obviously we are talking predominantly hoppy beers here, which are hardly seasonal, but I’m not going to deny it has been a fun exercise. Tonight I drank one of the beers I'd intended to drink fresh and found that a little ageing is not always a bad thing.

For various reasons, price being the predominant one, I’ve yet to have any Jolly Pumpkin Artisan Ales, although I do have their Noel de Cabalaza lined up for Advent. When I saw their Luciernaga (6.5%) on Beers of Europe recently, I loved the label design and translated name – “The Firefly.” The description of a “Artisan Pale Ale brewed in the Grand Cru Tradition” intrigued and confused me and made it all the more alluring. A look on the brewery’s website showed that this was a June seasonal release, so I thought it best to try it as fresh as I’ve been able to get it.

When my bottle arrived, however, I found that this was bottled for the June release … in 2012. I can’t deny I was a tad disappointed at this point, fearing that this may have succumbed to age like some other hoppy American imports I have had.

But then, this beer is Barrel Aged already, brewed with spices and in this “Grand Cru” tradition they refer to, which would remind most beer drinkers immediately of Rodenbach. “Make any season a celebration” the bottle states. Well, it is my birthday next week…

I (luckily) read a couple of blog posts that already exist about this beer, something I normally try to avoid so I form my own opinions. It was lucky in this instance as they each warned of this beers liveliness and I opened this very slowly. The pouring, though gentle, still made the beer explode in my glass. Even the brewery website advises to treat this beer like champagne.

Luciernaga is a wonderfully complex beer. It’s very pale but intriguingly murky in areas. The head settles from it’s bubble bath entrance to leave a muscle soak layer. It smells unquestionably tart, like a wild orchard cider mixed with a gueuze. There’s plenty of apples, nutmeg, lemon rind and, obviously, Brett.

The flavours are initially repeats of the scent, but there’s a definite hop zing in there that’s fresh, lemony but very light. It isn’t paunchy or intruding and this gives a delightful smoothness in the finish. I can’t help but be reminded of champagne, though this might be clouded by the brewery’s earlier reference to it. Whilst this beer’s funky, it’s a crisp, awakening tartness rather than an eye-watering, gurning hit. It’s a style reminiscent to us Brits these days in Wild Beer’s core range, though there’s plenty of the Ninkasi about this beer. I may have grown tired of sour beers recently but this is how they should be done. It’s brilliant and too drinkable. The huge 750ml bottle is gone too quickly.

A huge triumph for Jolly Pumpkin in my first offering from them. They feature in next month’s Advent calendar twice so now I’m even more excited. This has made me think that a slight, intended, sourness to hoppy imports we have to wait too long for may well enhance the flavour. It’s a shame these are such a high price by the time they hit shelves in this country, otherwise I’d buy so much more. Oh, and this is now one of my favourite beer labels ever. One for this labologist to geek out on.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

"They Had Their Issues, So..."

      There’s a set of garages to rent as storage units near my workplace. One of them is taken by a local florist that uses it to store flower arrangements for various events, that are more often than not funerals.   As such, at least once a week at 8am I will pass a car being loaded up with flowers arranged into heart shaped patterns or the letters M U M. It is a grounding reminder that, as I mentally grumble my way through the upcoming arbitrary grievances of my ordinary working day, a group of family and friends locally is going through the hardest time. It provides much needed perspective on days when I could do with being reminded of all that I have to be thankful for.   These little moments explain to me why it is possible for us to share a communal loss when a celebrity passes away. Grief is often a personal and lonely experience, shared between a minority of people in your life. When a co-worker loses a relative or friend, it has little affect on me, bar signing of
Post a Comment
Read more

The Ten Pubs That Made Me - Part 3: Dr Okell's / My Foley's Tap House and Leeds

A pint in Mr Foley's Tap House from December 2022     This is Part 3 (the fourth post) of an ongoing project. Please see the beginning of Part 0 for details.    Come the end of this journey, there may be a lesson in procrastination that I am unlikely to heed. These posts stem from a list that I made three years ago and a series that I embarked on 18 months ago. We’ve only now reached a 30% completion rate and with this post we are back to fail for the second time.   This odyssey began with a trip to Mr Foley’s Tap House in February 2022 – named Dr Okell’s bar on my first visits in 2005 – only to discover that it was closed. It did reopen by the time that the post was coming out and I managed a brief visit in December 2022. However, my July 1 st 2023 trip to Leeds, on which this post is based, is met with this sign at the door of the bar:      A quick check of social media shows an Instagram post from the day before (June 30 th ) announcing the closure of the
Post a Comment
Read more

LIVERPOOL - the City that Craft Beer Forgot Part II (and found...)

After visiting Liverpool, one of my favourite cities, in February this year, and not impressing people with my rather hasty but honest verdict on the city’s lack of craft beer, I jumped at the chance to return last week and hoped to come out with a more attractive judgement. A couple of friends and I visited on a day out, with neither of them having been drinking in the city before. It was left to me – or rather, I volunteered – to plan the day’s itinerary and places to visit. I had a couple of new or unvisited places in mind myself, but knew it would be unfair to miss out on some of the city’s famous gems. With around 10-12 hours in which to fit in an entire city, I opted to concentrate on the famous Georgian Quarter and see if we had time for the Dale Street end later on.    We planned to arrive in the city for around 11a.m. just in time to walk up Mount Pleasant to the new-on-me, though I believe it has been opened three years, Clove Hitch on Hope Street for breakfast.
Post a Comment
Read more