Fernet About It
Arizona Wilderness Brewing Co.

 

what a cool beer! brewed in collaboration with prairie, its designed after the dark sticky liqueur, being brewed with things like anise and cardamom and fennel and saffron and mint. i was skeptical at first, these sound like competing and clashing elements, but i was convinced pretty quickly that this is in fact awesome. the base beers is a dark saison, and i think thats about the only beer that this would work with in this way. the darker wheat malt and the mild belgiany and slightly spicy yeast strain both seem to be critical elements for integration of the added culinary ingredients. looks almost like a light porter in the glass, quite dark with redder edges and a gushing white head. aroma and flavor are both awesome, like a dr pepper soda or something, all of the ingredients are so well fused in here that they almost cease to stand out on their own. i love the cardamom though, i get it all the way through, with a tea-like bitterness in the end. the next most obvious is the spearmint, giving a lively freshness and almost medicinal botanical nature to the beer, a strong impact indeed. the other ingredients play more minor roles to me, but they are awesome with this yeast strain, and it does end up tasting a lot like fernet, even with a little spice burn on the way down. the beautiful thing about it too, is that its not sweet, maybe in the middle it is, but by the end its dried up nicely, so this ended up being real drinkable for me. a clever mix of weird ingredients, i loved it!

 

Well, it tastes like fernet... so thats good I guess. Its well executed, but at a certain point, if you have done something that shouldn't be done, but you do it well, is that still admirable? It was difficult to finish a 4oz glass of this, if you get a larger pour you better really like fernet.