Wednesday, July 17, 2013

Chocolate Covered Cherries? Maybe.

I must admit something. I've grown to really like sours over the last few months. What used to surprise my tongue now is very welcomed.

I've grown tired of IPAs, though they are still probably my most common beer during the summertime. I find myself looking at the cellar wondering what I want to drink, and the barleywines, stouts, porters, browns and others just don't sound appealing. I've already finished most of the lagers, pale ales, IPAs and other stuff you associate with summer drinking. Mind you, I spend most of my time inside (I spontaneously combust in the sun. Blame the Irish on my mom's side.) but when it's hot outside I don't usually want a heavy, thick beer.



I was in the mood,  yet again, for a sour, when I grabbed tonight's beer, a Rivertown Barrel Aged Old Sour Cherry Porter. I was a bit wary. Porters are heavier. They're more of a fall beer for me. They're not heavy enough for winter. They just taste like fall to me.

Not this bad boy. Rivertown Brewing took an Imperial porter, plopped it into bourbon barrels for three months with some dark Michigan cherries and inoculated the whole shebang with lactobacillus delbrueckii. They let the cherries, porter and yeast hang out together for three months in those barrels, then transferred the resulting concoction to bottles, where it conditioned a bit longer.

Shortly after this beer was released I managed to snag a bottle. I grabbed it at Midtown Wine and Spirits in Nashville, a favorite stop for me when I'm in The Music City, while I was in town for the soggiest Jimmy Buffett concert I've experienced yet. That includes the rain that led to the apocalyptic flooding in downtown Nashville a few years ago. This stuff just didn't let up for 24 hours straight. It made for miserable times, but who really has a bad time at a Jimmy Buffett concert?

Rivertown's bottle text says that you can cellar this beer for up to five years, but I was not waiting that long. I have enough old beers sitting in my cellar. I wanted to try this one fresh, and boy am I glad I did.

I opened this bomber with my trusty beer club and poured a snifter. As it glugged out of the bottle I noted that it seemed a smidge thinner than some of the porters I've had, but not as thin as others. I'd call it middling thin, kind of like Christina Hendricks in Firefly. There's a slight ruby color to it as it streams from the bottle, but not significant enough to change the color once it's in the glass.

The head on this beer was a bit disappointing. I noted it was seemingly not building a head, so I intentionally poured down the center of the glass from a bit of a height, and all it did was foam a little, settling down and disappearing rapidly, much like a well-aged barleywine will do.

The scent of this beer is nice. Some sours will really punish your nose and others will just smell like fruit. This one wsa a bit vinegary, which I find nice in a sour. The cherry came through fairly prominently, and I got the vaguest hint of bitter chocolate.

Upon tasting it, it had a bit of a boozy quality, which would be the bourbon coming out. You can definitely get that bourbon corn taste. The cherries were tart on the tongue, almost like a sour cider, and the yeast made this even more pronounced. There also was a dark chocolate tinge to it. Kind of like sour cherries covered in thin chocolate. The malts do not overpower the sour, but they do tone down what I imagine would be a monster tartness without them.

The bubbles in the glass and on the tongue were small and not too prominent. They had a feel almost like a semi-flat champagne. I found the latter part of the taste to be a bit off-putting, as it degraded to a woody bitterness. It wasn't bad. It's just not what I would choose to linger on the back of my tongue for an extended period of time. There was absolutely no lacing left on the glass, which would probably owe to the high acidity I got on the sides of my tongue.

After the bottle was drained I noted a significant amount of sludge on the bottom of the bottle, but I never saw it during the pour. It looked a bit like the stuff that sits at the bottom of your hot cocoa cup.

Overall, I really enjoyed this beer. Mrs. Traveler? Not so much. Her tasting notes consist of "Vinegary. Eeeyeeww... Yucky. Tastes spoiled."

At least it leaves more for me. 






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