North By Northwest Belgian Sour
North by Northwest Restaurant & Brewery

GABF Weekend '08:

Seems like a lightly hopped pilsner-type beer that has been soured. The pour brings a yellow-golden hue with a mild haze, light carbonation thus light on head formation / retention. Aromas of sharp berry tartness, crabapples, under-ripe grapes, mustiness, and a raw oak notes. Flavors are more malty than found in aromas with a soft pilsner-type taste and texture. But then the barnyary, sour, funky notes hit and bring a lot of under-rippened fruit flavors, along with granny smith's, lemons, limes, and appricots. Light vinegar flavor with woodsy flavors late. Thin and mouthwatering with the astringency and supurb attenuation. Finishes lemony and mouth puckering. A lot of challenging flavors, but a good beer for a wild-card style.

I first sampled this at the Bomb Factory Party and then multiple times throughout GABF 2008. Much to Ty's (the head brewer) chagrin at times, I easily drank more of this over the long weekend than anything else. The beer has a full gold color to it, is reasonably clear and is topped by a frothy, pale white colored head. The aroma has a fruity / tart note of grapefruit, lots of lactic character, plus some welcome harder acidic notes that lean toward acetic and help to boost more fruit aromatic notes. There is a touch of grassy malt towards the finish and there is a soft, lovely, funky, butyric acid stained, musty, musky, barnyard note that lies in the background of the nose and seems to just anchor the whole thing together.

The flavor is just so complex. The sourness actually coats the palate, but is not in anyway overwhelming (at least for this sour head). The acidity is definitely complex in character, it is dominated by lactic sourness, but it has such a nice, expressive acetic acidity to it that I really enjoy finding in my sour beers. There is a lingering, musky, farmhouse cheese note that sort of softly intrudes on the sour parade. This has quite a bit of fruitiness to it, that is really amplified by the complex sourness; flavors of sour apple, a touch of tart cherry notes and a richly fruity, balsamic type note each add some layered richness to this brew. Carbonated just enough to keep the beer light and textured, the beer is quite quaffable, but definitely has a light viscousness to it that helps to soften the effect of the acidity just a bit.

This is an incredibly fantastic beer, there was a reason I drank so much of this. I am really quite jealous that Austin has a brewery doing things like this (I wish a commercial AZ enterprise would start doing beers like this). I really like the acetic edge that is in this beer; I am finding that I like a more dominant lactic character to be offset by acetic acid notes, as it really boosts the complexity of a brew.