Christmas Snow Salad
Evil Twin Brewing

evil twin still interests me so much, really always has, even if the chatter has died down a bit over the years, thats craft in general right now i guess. this is such a weird beer, not from their nyc spot even though the label says new york city, but from that twelve percent location in ct, they call it a christmas style sour ale, done with pineapple, cherry, pecans, walnuts, and lactose, and it tastes like the image on the can straight up, takes me back to church potluck dinners or something, even though i never heard it called snow salad before, i know exactly what it is, really a palate memory comes awake with this one, even if i dont love the beer to drink, i respect it, and i think the use of nuts is excellent, that can be tricky and real nuts are uncommon in beer, but the nuts dont seem like flavoring to me, which is a nice feature of this. to me this is fully novelty level stuff, was immediately glad to be sharing the can three ways. the pour is pink tinted, rusty red, lots of sediment as we pour it down, really unrefined looking, no real head at all but enough carbonation. the nose is cool, sweet and tart at the same time, with the cherry and the pineapple both like fruit cocktail style, that type of fruit not like, fresh sliced or picked, candied and kind of preserved, just like the dish, which adds a unique authenticity to the mission in a way it wouldnt in a beer just trying to be cherry and pineapple, if that makes sense, well done there. the nuts are obvious as well, maybe more walnut than pecan, not too sour, balanced by the lactose, notes of cool whip and vanilla, really nostalgic sensory experience here. the flavor is odd, i get the nuts, walnut first, almost chewy like it gets in the dish after a day or two in the fridge, soft like that, but honest, pink cherry, dehydrated pineapple and canned crushed, decent acid most of the way, almost no grain flavor but there is some body to this, long aftertaste goes a little chemical as it warms, some lemon hard candy, lactic twang, orange juice, but the last thing is the walnut and pecan, so neat! i wish the beer was cleaned up, these adjunct sours are almost always gross to look at, and the flavors here are so much better than the beer is overall in terms of quality, its mucky and full of sediment and looks and feels sloppy, but that might just be a product of packing all this stuff in. fun and interesting, cool share beer for the holidays, some refinement would go a long way, great use of the nuts or nut elements in this, not like anything ive ever had. not sure ive seen a sour with nuts before, and the way the fruit approximates the can image is insane. a little is enough, but this is clever. i would rate this actually lower overall than its aggregate score here comes out to be, but its still cool stuff.

 

Perhaps a forerunner for weird-beer-of-the-year, Evil Twin draws inspiration from snow salad when creating their Christmas beer.

Christmas Snow Salad pours like an ugly duckling, forming a muddy rusty appearance and a fizzy, clumping froth before falling still. As the scent of tropical fruit, pitted fruit, wine and cider swoon the nose, its first sip hits the palate with fruit juice, gelatin, sourdough and fruitcake ahead of a pineapple, cherry, green apple, lemon, lime and white grape fruit cocktail. Trending pressingly tart but also rounded with the nuttiness of pecan and walnut shows that the beer is in strong contrast with itself.

Fuller for most sour ale but on par for smoothie sour ale, this drinkable snow salad is a mind trip for the tastebuds, right down to the chucks of stuff that plagues the later sips.

 

Pours hazy pink/red with a nice head of foam. Aroma is cherry, those maraschino cherries. I get very little else. Taste is again cherry with pineapple. Sweet and sour at the same time. Very nice and refreshing.