Lemon Crush
10 Barrel Brewing Co.

12 oz can from Boise Co-op. Very pale, white grape juice color, small skin of head. Aroma is lemons, more tart than sweet. Taste also has the lemons featured prominently, tart and dry.

 

Berliner with lemon peels? Nowadays that counts as a pretty straightforward sour, but even 5-6 years ago I think this would have gotten a lot of attention.

Pours pale yellow, filtered and fairly tepid--which is absolutely fine for the style, and imho preferable to the overcarbed Berliners produced by less competent brewers.

Aroma is sweet and lightly sharp. Very clean and straightfoward, actually. The flavor is similar: tart yeast and lemon up front, balanced by crisp sweetness, and then ending dry and clean.

the variants on this one just keep on coming. i think the issue is that the base berliner is just okay. its so light in body and wheat flavor than even a modest addition of fruit or something really renders it sort of one dimensional, and in this case, a little cheap to me. its real pale in color from the tap and without a lot of head activity. the aroma and flavor are sharp from the acidity and the lemon, but its also kind of sweet like confectioners sugar or something too, doesnt seem to me to be grain derived sweetness, which is odd, lemons arent sweet, its almost like this has been back sweetened or something, i wish it were drier. there is a neat mineral profile to this and the faintest little herbal aspect keeping it from being too bland, but the lemon really overtakes the beer, and the berliner itself is kind of lost to it, which i think has been the case with most of these. i also think it could be cleaner, a light sweaty thing going on here, and a longer finish than i generally prefer in this style. more carbonation is also necessary, this really needs a boost. overall its not awful, id still take it over a lot of its peers, but they can do better than this, and it seems more bud than 10 barrel to me, which i rarely think when i have their beers outside of this series...

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

rb

On tap at the Boise pub earlier today... Pours mostly clear yellow with a short lived sudsy white head. Very lemony, but the lactic notes from the base Berliner still shine distinctly and differently from the lemon zest. However the zest adds a pretty intense lemon component... Very tasty and certainly very drinkable.

4/4/4.25/4.25/4