Brett De Garde
Beer Engine

Brewed to celebrate their second anniversary, the Beer Engine whips up a French-style Biere de Garde with a wild Belgian twist. Fermented with Brettanomyces, the musty lager-like beer takes on powdery-dry and strong spice flavor in complement.

Pouring with a creamy visual density- the beer is golden-peach in color with a bready translucence. A very creamy bone-white head caps the ale with mousse-like consistency. It shows persistent staying power and sheds broken lacing patterns in its wake.

Its bready-sweet scent starts the show with light sugar cookie and softly kilned grain. But then the complexities start to build. First, a musty scent of aged oak, saddle leather, and sandalwood herb pull away from its malty underpinnings. Further into the scent, a high pepper note extends from peppercorn and fennel to mild peat and burnt plastics.

To taste, much of the same dense lager-like bread sweetness coaxes the early palate. Coupled with the lightness of wood spice, cellar-like, cork-like character- the ale is spot on its aroma. But as the beer finishes, it largely avoids the taste of scorched earth and latex that was pronounced in its scent.

Interestingly, the ale retains much of its bready-rich body deep into the taste until a swift turn to powdery dryness and lightly tannic warmth to close. Its added body makes it more rewarding than lagers although not as drinkable.

It's the always present cork-like must of traditional Biere de Garde that makes the wild Brett so inviting as it further promotes the earthen taste of the French low country. If anything, this is a young beer as it will continue to dry and develop powdery earth taste and textures as it continues to mature.