E Is For Elderberry
Evil Twin Brewing

A thanks to the founding father of the canquest, woodychandler, for this beer. Poured from a 16 oz. can. Has a purple/pinkish color with 2 inches of head. Smell is of berries, salty. Taste is the same as the aroma, sour and very dry. Feels medium bodied in the mouth and overall is a pretty good beer.

 

Hazy reddish purple with small bits of yeast. Lots of fluffy head. Sour and berry smell, grapes. Never had elderberry. Taste the sourness, apples, berries, some carbonation. Normally do not prefer sour beer but this went down smooth. Purchased a 500 ml can.

 

 

L: Hazy red color, quarter finger white head, thin lacing, no visible carbonation.

S: Sour, fruity.

T: Slightly sour, smooth, refreshing. Perfect beer to end the day.

F: Light bodied, easily drinkable, very refreshing.

O: One of the most drinkable sours I ever had. Chapeau!

I have decided to dedicate myself to the Sue Grafton series of beers this week. ICYMI, she was the author of the Kinsey Milhone series of mystery novels in which each title beCAN with a successive letter of the alphabet. I was not a big fan of her series, but I would bet that I will like these much more. Sadly, I don't think that I bought either A, B or C when they were released, but I plan to stay current from now on. Viva The CANQuest (tm)!

From the CAN: "Let's face it - we all like to put labels on things. It just makes us feel more comfortable. What assumptions have people made about you based on your race, religion, gender, the way you dress, or even the beer you drink? We did in fact label this beer for your convenience. It his a fresh tartness, a twist of salt and a balanced fruitiness of elderberry - apparently a complete reflection of your personality. We hope you like what this label says about you?"

I am equally as curious to try this one as with last night's Dewberry. I CANfess relative ignorance where Elderberry is CANcerned, but I am hoping to get smarter. My maternal uncle has made elderberry wine & my late father smelt of elderberries, but I have no real recollection of any of it. They are supposed to be full of antioxidants & I am in favor of anti- anything & everything. They are supposed to have a sweet-tartness, but that could be applied to so many fruits. Color Me neither Yellow nor Blue, but CANurious & slap me with an "X" rating!

I beCAN by agitating the CANtents while everything was still intact. I have noticed a LOT of lees in this series, suggesting that they did not hold back on the adjuncts & went full monty. I want them in suspension, NOT sitting on the kick like a buncha punters! Once the CAN & its CANtents had had a few minutes to settle & calm, I Crack!ed open the vent. If the previous entry had struck me as an amuse-l'œil, this one was a laff riot! It looked like fresh-spun pink cotton CANdy above preserves. It formed a brief finger (or so) of fizzy, foamy, soapy, pinkish head with exceptionally poor retention, falling away as quickly as I poured. Color was a deeply-hazy/lightly-cloudy deep Magenta (SRM = N/A). Nose had a pronounced tartness along with its inherent saltiness. This one may be the most challenging yet, given the inherent tartness of the lactic acid coupled with a tart fruit. Here goes nothing! Mouthfeel was the stylistically standard - thin & watery. Whew! This one was BOTH tart & sour! My lips puckered even as I felt a sharpness in the hinges of my jaw! Phew! As an added bonus, I could really differentiate the fruitiness from everything else. It was quite berry-like, but nothing that I would put into a pie (although I say the same thing about rhubarb). It had a unique semi-sweetness that tasted more like a hybrid of fruits than a standalone. It evinced a raspberry/blackberry sweetartness along with a blueberry sharpness and a slight grapiness, not vinous, per se, but more towards Concord grapes. It was a real revelation, IMHO. The fruity (remember, NOT sweet) flavors blended nicely with the saltiness & I was personally glad that they did not go overboard with the lactic acidity. Instead, the fruit was allowed the spotlight as the other adjuncts took a back seat. Finish was dry, almost vinous & it suddenly hit me as to why it is a good fruit for wine. This CAN have an appeal to a wide variety of drinkers, including this guy. Yum.

 

Evil Twin Brewing "E Is For Elderberry"
16 fl. oz. can, contract brewed at Westbrook Brewing in Mt. Pleasant, SC and coded "2759-2760 07/20/18 12:33"
$5.99 @ Total Wine & More, Cherry Hill, NJ

Notes via stream of consciousness: As a fan of both sour beers and elderberry I'm looking forward to this. Nice label as usual. 4.5% abv. OK... it's poured a very hazy pinkish-ruby colored body beneath a massive head of pink foam. The head retention is quite good and I'll probably have to wait a bit to get my first sip. The aroma is fruity as expected, but in a generic kind of way. It's sharp and berry-like but it could just as easily be blackberries or raspberries or even currants as much as it could be elderberries. It suggests that there's some serious sourness there, but the saltiness also comes through. Let's see what the flavor is like... definitely tart! Sour even. The berries come through much more clearly, and there's some underlying sweetness from the malt that balances it. It's pretty damned nice! The salt is not overdone but it's clearly present. It's not bitter, nor does it need to be. It's pretty much right on for what I thought it would be. In the mouth it's got a bite from the acidity and a somewhat elevated carbonation, and it's light-medium in body. Looking back, once the initial head dropped it became just a thin collar, and very little if any lacing was left behind - but that's to be expected of sour beers. Overall, I thought the initial head retention earned it good marks. I'm fairly impressed with this. It's fruity and tart, and very refreshing. Worth trying.
Review #6,548

One of, if not the, best sour any of us have ever had. Paired with a strong sour flavor is a deep, rich, real berry flavor that one would expect from crunching on the seeds from a berry. The only thing detracting from this beer is that it is rather acidic, and it would be hard for us to drink a full 16 oz. Highly recommended to any one interested even slightly in good beer.

Another one due to the generosity of @Dragginballs76 during NBS BIF #8.
Body is crisper than I would have expected, and the red of cranberry juice. Decent little white head tinged by the same red elderberry. Settles in to minor archielagos and wet bubbles.

Nose has some berry juiciness to it balanced with the dull salinity of the style.

Nice balance of juicy elderberry and tart acidity. Mild salinity on the finish.

Lots of tart acidity maybe a little stronger than I would usually associate with the style (I think of a gose as more easy drinking and refreshing, warm weather style. I quite like the tartness, but it shears almost over more into mild fruited sour type territory).
Thanks Mike for sending this one along!