A Whale A Week: Side Project Blueberry Flanders

Now in my second year, A Whale A Week is my challenge to try (with an array of beer loving friends) a rare beer for every week of the year.  Last year I had a great time with this and have continued it for 2016.  Not every beer will be a truly "white whale" beer, but all are hard to find and a treat to try!  This week we try something different.  Tired of just trying out one beer (and lets be honest how can I really shrink my cellar at this rate) each week, we're going to break out a bunch of them!

Side Project Blueberry Flanders

I've reviewed one of Side Project's beers before (Saison du Fermier) HERE, so check it out for more background on the brewery and the super friendly wizard that creates such amazing beers for both Perennial Brewing and his own Side Project Brewing. For this tasting, Rob Wengler (one of my old high school friends, homebrewer, beer video journalist with Limited Release) shared this little bottle.  Along with us was my wife Sarajo--professed lover of sour beers.  The Blueberry Flanders is based on the Flanders red sour mixed fermentation style made most famous by Rodenbach in Belgium.  Obviously blueberries were used in the process, but I'm not sure how.  And the beer was aged in wine barrels to add complexity.  The 7% ABV beer has a 96 score on Ratebeer and a 91 on Beer Advocate.  


Aroma:

Eric: Just taking a whiff of this beer my salivary glands freaked out and caused me to gleek all over the place.  Very tart and tannic.  Blueberry skins.  Mix of acid, brett funkiness, and maybe some pediococcus.  Fruity and bright.  Eye opening.
Rob: Smells sour.  I do get a hint of mellow blueberry pie--but the tartest blueberry pie ever.

Appearance:

Eric: Highly carbonated and deep amber with pink highlights.  Looks like fruit soda.  Very fine white head fades to the glass edge quickly.  Excellent clarity with bubbles coalescing on the sides of the glass. 
Rob: Looks like Canadian grape/raisin soda.  Purple with a twinge of brown.  Lots of tiny bubbles like Champagne.
Sarajo: Can't see for the bubbles!

Flavor:

Eric:  As I take my first sip shivers go up and down my neck and spine.  So tart it almost hurts--like biting into a raw cranberry.  Has a hint of sweetness at the center, but is quite fleeting.  Blueberry is subtle and comes off more as the tannic skin of the berry rather than the sweet flesh.  Hint of pie cherry and lemon rind.  Stays with you after finished with a strong tart end.
Rob: Not mind-bendingly tart like I thought it would be.  I wouldn't say it was and overwhelming blueberry flavor, but think it comes through as a "rounding of the corners" of the sour ale.  Still makes me drool like a 2 year old (REDACTED) with a tooth coming in.
Sarajo: Mouthpuckeringly tart.

Overall:

Eric: A wonderfully sour beer, but really at the extreme edge of drinkability.  Glad this comes in a small bottle!  Much more tart and acidic than the typical blended Flanders style.  Despite all this, I still love it.  4.5
Rob: Light, crisp, of course effervescent.  I'm not a big sour guy but this is still pretty good.  4
Sarajo: 4.5

Overall Score: 4.42

My Favorite Color, Cherry Red...

This weekend, whilst huddling indoors to avoid the persistent downfall of fluffy white snow, I decided to do some beer crafting that I had been avoiding.  About a month ago I brewed a Flanders red ale to commemorate my trip to visit Rodenbach Brewery in Roselare, Belgium.  That beer has been sitting in the primary, working on becoming a sour.  I have made this beer before, and my goal is to do one each year, until I really get the process down right.

For this particular batch of beer I wanted to spice things up a bit.  The biggest complaint I have had on reviews of previous batches was a lack of cherry flavor, so I figured I'd accentuate that perceived lack with some real cherries.  Now the BJCP style mentions intense fruitiness, with plum, orange, black cherry or currant flavors.  Having been to the source, I can say that the basic Rodenbach is pretty light, thin and has a tart but not especially cherry flavor.  The Grand Cru certainly has more of this character as it is blended with less young beer; and the Vintage is not blended at all, resulting in a lot more sourness and deep fruit.  Most of my batches have ended up tasting like a regular Rodenbach, which makes sense since I'm dealing with one batch and not blending old and new to get the roundness of character.  I just don't have the carboy space to take on the blending. 

My friend Jon grows sour cherries and had a surplus this year, so I lucked out in getting a hefty batch from him.  I decided on 10 pounds of these tiny tart cherries for the current batch of beer.  They were all frozen, so I pulled them out of the freezer in the morning and slowly worked on de-stemming them.  I'm not sure if this step was really necessary, but I worry that the stems in contact with the beer for most of a year will add a tannic astringency that might cut down on the smoothness and body in the finished product.  So I took most of the day working on this.  Being frozen or mostly frozen, this was chilly work.  I would pick for about 5-10 minutes until the hands were numb, take a break, then return for more.  In retrospect, I would pull the cherries out the night before and let them thaw more.  Though the stems pop off easier if the cherries are still firm and cold than warm and squidgy.  Let me tell you that ten pounds of cherries is a lot! 

Finally all my work was done.  Now the question is how to get those cherries into the small neck of the carboy.  Improvisation is key.  I found a large plastic funnel left over from my stove-top brewing days and rolled small amounts of cherries at a time through it.  When the cherries got stuck in the funnel I used the handle of a sanitized plastic spoon to jam them through.  Ghetto, but it works!  These are the logistical issues that the magazines and brewing books never cover.  One is simply told..."put 10# of cherries in the batch..."  This process took me about 30 minutes.  A plastic carboy bucket would have worked great for this, but too much oxygen will permeate that over the year this will sit.  The acetobacter that gives this style much of its sourness needs a bit of oxygen, but not that much.  I often use a Parafilm over the top of the carboy for a month or so to let in a limited amount of oxygen later in the process.

Why am I doing this in the laundry room instead of my basement brew area?  I am paranoid about mixing my sour process with my regular brewing.  I use all different equipment for sour beers and keep them sequestered in Tupperware containers in the garage when not in use.  I use the laundry sink for clean-up and even keep my carboys up in the laundry room (much to my wife's chagrin.)  Don't bother buying extra equipment for sours, just use your older equipment.  That carboy you have had for 10 years with a few scratches on the inside?  Sounds great for sours!  The Auto-siphon with the little crack in it?  Sours!  Old tubing?  You get the picture.

I have to say that the first taste of this beer is not thrilling.  Bitter and nasty.  I almost didn't add it to these hard-bought cherries.  But remembering previous batches tasting pretty "Blech" before aged made me take the risk.  Hopefully I don't waste a lot of time and cherries. 

Now it sits until next Fall, when I will taste it and transfer to a third carboy to get it off the cherry sludge.  Getting all those cherries out should be just as exciting as getting them in there.  Maybe more so.  Might have to take pics of that too. 

Up next on the brewing agenda is a 10 gallon batch of lambic.  I'll be putting the other 10# of cherries in half and my first big batch of frozen raspberries from my backyard bramble for the other half.  And another year of waiting begins.  I do have a 5 gallon batch of last year's raspberry lambic that still has a white pellicle on it that I might have to finally try blending with.  After my trip to Cantillon I really want to make some great lambics.  I have less spiders in my house than they do at Cantillon though...this might interfere with my process.