Elderflower Kettle Sour
Bridge Brewing Company

 

So... I'm starting to get the hang of sours, but elderflowers? That's a stretch for me. Overall, this beer has plenty going on. It pours hazy and amber, with a fluffy white head. To the nose, the sour character is clear - bready, floral and grassy. The malt is accentuated by a slight tartness, pepper and flowery, leafy hops. It's pretty darn interesting, actually. This is the second "odd" pairing from Bridge that I've had in the past week and I give them full points for being adventurous!

 

650ml bottle - a kettle sour, made with elderflowers and Galaxy and Centennial hops - simple, right?

This beer pours a slightly hazy, medium copper amber colour, with three fat fingers of puffy, rocky, and sort of bubbly off-white head, which leaves some sparsely strewn chunky lace around the glass as it lazily sinks away.

It smells of bready and doughy pale malt, gently sour light orchard fruit, spoiled milk, a musky floral thing, and further leafy, weedy, and dead grassy hop bitters. The taste is gritty and grainy pale malt, somewhat dank elderflowers, a still understated lactic acridity, ethereal white pepper spice, some minor muddled underripe stone and citrus fruitiness, and a further leafy, earthy, and grassy green hoppiness.

The carbonation is fairly standard in its perfunctorily supportive frothiness, the body a so-so middleweight, and not particularly smooth, as that low-key general sourness keeps the majority of my tastebuds just on edge. It finishes trending dry, the sweetness falling out of the base graininess, while the various milky, fruity, and floral acerbities continue milling about.

Overall, a pleasant enough version of the style, the more genial tartness achieved via kettle souring doing all that it can to pervade this offering. Toss in the flowers and citrusy hops, and well, if not exactly complex, things are certainly, um, 'busy' around here, and that ain't a bad deal, I'm thinking.