The fun with foeder continues apace at Bridge Road Brewers with the latest release combining a few past projects in one. The base beer fermented with Brettanomyces is a pale ale, similar to the first beer to have passed through the brewery's tower of oak. To the mix has been added locally foraged botanicals collected in conjunction with High Country gin producers Reed & Co, as with previous release Thursday. And an old sparring partner of Bridge Road's, 8 Wired founder Søren Eriksen, was involved in the brew and hop selection.
The combo of chosen hops (Nelson Sauvin from Søren's adopted homeland and Aussie Enigma) with the lemon myrtle, lemon scented gum and mountain pepper creates an aroma that enters your olfactory system in the sudden and aggressive manner of a SWAT team that's fired a volley of climbing hooks up each nostril and has just seconds to blow up the joint. It's part massively loaded New World hop bomb, part spicy cocktail, and delivers heaps of lively lemon citrus, Sorachi Ace like lemon meringue creaminess and ripe pineapple galore. The flavours are less intense, if no less lively, closed out by a drying, herbal bitter finish.
The most outlandish thing about the whole project? That a three-way, transnational, inter-booze, "wild" yeast, foraged ingredients, oak fermented beer release seems kinda normal. It's only six years since Mountain Goat's hookup with Thornbridge for the Thorny Goat black IPA seemed utterly exotic, after all...
Published August 10, 2017 2017-08-10 00:00:00
