Sour Of Love
Ninkasi Brewing Company

 

 

On tap at Whole Foods in Pasadena, CA.

Pours a hazy light pinkish-red with a foamy reddish-white head that settles to wisps of film on top of the beer. Foamy streaks of lace form around the glass on the drink down. Smell is slightly sour with grain, cranberry, and acidic aromas. Taste is much the same with slightly sour grain, cranberry, and berry juice flavors on the finish. There is a mild amount of acidity on the palate with each sip. This beer has a lower level of carbonation with a slightly crisp mouthfeel. Overall, this is a pretty good beer with solid flavors, but the smell is subtle to me.

Serving type: on tap.

 

1L howler from Wine and Beyond, they of the sometimes surprising growler station offerings.

This beer pours a hazy, medium salmon-tinged amber colour, with two fat fingers of puffy, loosely foamy, and rather bubbly pink-edged off-white head, which leaves some decaying limestone cliff lace around the glass as it quickly blows off.

It smells of tart cranberry, raspberry, and lemon fruit, a slightly funky yeastiness, grainy pale and caramel malt, a touch of hard water flintiness, and faint leafy and floral hop bitters. The taste is zingy and green watermelon rind, a lesser cranberry and stale lemon tartness, wan bready and grainy pale malt, ethereal watered-down pulpy orange juice, a hint of lactic sourness, and more weak earthy, leafy, and floral hoppiness.

The carbonation is adequate in its supportive and occasionally flirtatious frothiness, the body a thin middleweight, and pretty smooth for a wild/sour/tart brew of any sort. It finishes off-dry, the base malt not dead yet, while the muddled red fruitiness sees its acerbity in serious need of a re-up. Good thing, then, eh?

Overall, for this sort of offering I'm typically a wuss, and don't care to be bashed over the palate with acid, be it fruit, lacto, or Brett-borne. So, here I'm quite engaged by the inherently flavourful, easy to drink, and above all, refreshing nature - this is indeed the stuff that you pour into pretentious glasses on hot summer patios.

Poured from a growler to snifter glass. Consumed 01/29/2016.

Rating #1,700.

Super dry . Not crazy sour but nice tartness.

 

L: Grapefruit Pink, Cloudy and almost an orange hue when held up to the light. has a small fluffy white head that disappeared quickly leaving no lacing down the side.

S: Tart right off the nose, almost smells like a grapefruit from the acidity, has a slight smell of cranberry as well.

T: Sour right off the start but then it changes into almost an acidic taste in your mouth which isn't the greatest. you can defiantly taste the cranberry in there and you almost get an orange citrus taste as well.

F: has a fair amount of carbonation, but it leaves that fake sour taste in your mouth, and over acidic.

O: A Fairly nice sour beer, i still prefer the original sour beers to this one beacause of that fake acidic taste these ones leaver in your mouth.

 

On tap at the Red Hot in Tacoma.

The look of this thing is phenomenal. Very pink and fruity.

However the nose raises some questions. I get a very faint hit of cranberry. Nothing else. No funkiness.

Taste follows the nose. It tastes like I imagine watermelon juice would taste. Very subdued, subtle fruit flavor. Virtually zero sourness. It's not bad however. Just misleading. Much more a Berliner than a sour/wild. Refreshing and crisp. I'd probably order this again, even with the false advertising.

Hazy pink with a good white head... no real lacing or retention.. Tart lemon and cranberry essence on the nose is mirrored on the palate.. good lacto notes.. Definitely seems like a Berliner more than a standard sour... Tasty sour that you don't have to think about too much.

3.25/3.25/3.5/3.5/3.5