Beer Radar
By John Krüger
(First published by Wine Business Magazine in 2011)
You can’t always get what you want
But if you try sometimes you might find
You get what you need (to drink)
Try as I will, I just can’t find a Pomegranate Saison in my local bottle shop. For that matter Berliner Weisse and Lambics are pretty rare as well. There’s a plethora of beers out there and my tongue is dying to meet them. The trouble is, they’re just too obscure to find in even a specialty bottle shop let alone a purveyor of mass marketed generic beers. One old bloke in a drive through bottlo thought I was taking the piss when I asked if he had any Little Creatures, so I probably would have got a punch in the nose if I’d mentioned Buttface Amber Ale.
A search on the internet revealed that Valley Brewing Co in California do make a Pomegranate Saison, but getting my hands on one would be quite a task. The next best option, or maybe the best, is to make one myself. Ah, the joys of home brewing. Not with a can opener and a kettle of boiling water but with malted barley, fresh raw wheat and two bottles of pomegranate molasses. A couple of packs of specialist liquid yeast from the USA complete this unique brew. French Saison yeast contributes peppery, dry spicy characters with a “farmhouse” kind of twang. The resulting beer is weird to say the least. It suggests fruit and sweetness at the start but takes a quick u-turn on the tongue and finishes dry and tart. Refreshing and interesting, it’s being raved about by some of my close friends who happen to have tasted the best of the best in the wine industry and like me, crave alternatives to wine and mainstream beers on occasion.
The good news is, I’m not alone. The home brewing fraternity understand my lust for alternative beers and they’re knocking up some stunning alternatives to the usual offerings. Just have a run through the following selection of highly ranked beers entered in the Specialty Beer class from the recent home brew awards in Adelaide;
Smoked Marzen, Hibiscus Witbier, oak aged IPA, oak-aged Anzac IPA, Russian imperial stout wood-aged beer, pumpkin, ginger & spiced beer, light Grenache grape ale, Christmas spiced ale, sour cherry Saison, Hibiscus Belgian ale, honey & lemon myrtle beer, fruit and spice old ale, cherry beer, stout with cocoa & vanilla, Schwarzbier/Lambic, traditional Bock with blueberries, Christmas spiced star anise coriander & vanilla beer, red & raisons smoked ale, vanilla & maple syrup beer and maple pale ale.
Word is the class was a joy to judge and I’m quite envious of those involved in judging this class. Luckily 110 litres of Pomegranate Saison should keep me happy for a while.
