For the Faithful: To Lay Me Down
Fiddlehead Brewing Company

super cool beer here, spendy bottles but super sharp in the black glass, im not even sure i knew these guys were making wild beer like this. picked it up at the source and shared it with my brother, a time honored but all too rare tradition. this is a blended wild beer aged in oak and conditioned on strawberries, but thats not really obvious from the packaging, and we approached this not even knowing it was fruited. really mature stuff, funky and tart and mouthwatering, fruity notes in the fermentation profile, white wine, dried apricot, golden raisin, even fresh lemon, the strawberry sweetness seems mostly fermented out, and the oak is strong enough to obscure some of the fruitiness too, but their essence remains in here. the color shows little to no sign of being fruited either, lightly cloudy pale orange tone, maybe faintly pink, but we drank it in the twilight hours so light was low, not a ton of head but good carbonation throughout. there is some orange citrus character to this, some almost white wine vinegar acidity adding intensity, and background layers of red berries, floral honey, and new oak, vanilla character, some brett, and even a green apple note, good complexity, thoroughly wild, but also a little more acidic than expected and its quite bracing, especially as this warms, and i think it comes at the expense of the fruit, which is identifiable in here but for me not at all the defining element of this beer. some grainy body to this but dry overall, well aged, curious about others in this for the faithful series. a little outside of what i know these guys to be great at, but a fun summer sour with a lot of personality. stoked to have been able to pick one up. despite the name, it may not be suited for a ton more aging, its so sour already, seems like the bacterial element has outcompeted any more subtle wild character, and its only likely to get more acidic as time goes on...