Avery Brewing Co. 15th Anniversary Ale
There aren’t too many American breweries that I associate with the production of wild ales. Russian River comes to mind first, followed by Lost Abbey, and then perhaps New Belgium, Cambridge Brewing Company (overlooked since they don’t bottle, but producing a lot of very good, and very unique wild ales), and then I know of some others here and there, but nothing that stands out. So even though I’ve gone to the Night Of The Funk at the annual Belgian Beer Fest, there really are just not too many producers who stick out in my mind when I think of this style.
Needless to say, Avery Brewing was not one of them. But my curiosity was piqued when I read several references to their 15th Anniversary Ale on the Burgundian Babble Belt homebrewing forum. The BBB homebrewing board frequently has lively discussions about brewing wild ales. As you may imagine, harvesting yeast from bottles of Belgian and American wild ales is a frequent discussion topic. Typically, the American producer mentioned in these discussions is Russian River.
But this week when I was looking back through recent posts I started to see references to this beer from Avery Brewing. I’d seen it in shops, but given how little I knew about it, and – lets’ admit it – how entrenched I was in drinking IPAs, I didn’t give it too much thought. In the end, I’ve turned out to be downright lucky that bottles of this are still available now, nearly a year after it was first released (May 2008).
This beer is evidence of one of the best traits of American brewers: their penchant for experimentation and venturing into the unknown. This is a golden ale fermented entirely with a unique strain of brettanomyces isolated and selected by the brewers at Avery. During fermentation they add black mission figs, hibiscus flowers, and white pepper. So here you have two aspects that demonstrate the amazing creativity of American breweries.
Every year Avery produces an anniversary ale, but this was the first one that was a wild ales. As I mentioned already, the beer is entirely fermented with brettanomyces, and during fermentation they add black mission figs, hibiscus flowers, and white pepper to the mix. The original gravity was 1.064 and the beer comes in at 7.8%, so I’m betting that the final gravity was somewhere in the realm of 1.008 or a shade higher. It was bottled in April of 2008, and I’m just opening this bottle in March of 2009, so it’s been in the bottle for almost a year.
The appearance is crystal clear, straw colored gold. The nose has loads of funk, alongside scents of leather, meadow, and overripe, rich citrus fruits. I hate to say it, but the nose is just full of brett. The palate is effervescent with carbonation and is very dry. The spectrum of flavors ranges from floral and grassy, to grapes and star fruits. As the beer warms sweet malt flavors play more of a role. All throughout are the unique flavors of brett, hard to describe but easy to recognize.
I was very pleasantly surprised by this beer. As I mentioned in an earlier post about Russian River Brewing’s Temptation, wild beers are a real fascination of mine, and it’s always interesting the first time you try a wild beer from a brewery that is new to you. In this case, I especially liked this beer when I let it warm up a bit. Straight from the fridge the funk flavors were especially strong and the beer came across as somewhat one-dimensional. As it warmed the flavors really blossomed and opened up, and the beer took on a number of new dimensions.
Also, keep your eyes open for Avery’s new Brabant Barrel-Aged Wild Ale. This was released very recently (late February?) and is the first in Avery’s new series of barrel-aged beers. Brabant is a dark Belgian ale measuring 8.65%, fermented with two strains of brettanomyces and aged for eight months in Zinfandel barrels. Based on how good this beer was, the Brabant should be a worthwhile find.
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