Missing Linck
Urban Artifact

12 ounce can, canned on 05/30/19. Served in a Teku glass, the beer pours a slightly hazy gold color with a huge frothy white head that took a while to settle down with some extra pours before I could start drinking it. Lots of lacing left behind. The brew smells like grainy malt, lemon, earthiness, grass and peppery spice. I think the taste is just like the aroma, but there's also some floral and minerally flavors noticeable too. Mouthfeel/body is light/medium and with a high amount of soft carbonation, too much carbonation for me. I probably should have drank this fresher, but the can just got hidden in the fridge until recently. Age hasn't seemed to hurt the flavor as far as I can tell. Overly high carbonation aside, I thought it was an enjoyable brew. If this one ever gets brought back I'll make a point to drink it fresh!

 

 

Golden sour ale brewed with yeast obtained from the 164-year-old beer cellars of the now defunct ``Linck Brewery" of CIncinnati. Poured from a can into a Triple Digit tulip. The pour is pale gold, fairly clear, and sports a very impressive bloom of fine white foam for a sour beer. Retention is amazing. It has a nose like a cross between a Hefewiezen a Belgian golden ale. Yes, there are tart notes of appleskins and vinegar, but I also get clove, pears, and a hint of banana.

Light body with a firm feel and a dry flavor. After getting a good whiff of the nose, I was really surprised to find the flavor is more like a good Belgian Saison. It is very dry throughout with some grainy, yet tart wheat-like notes up front followed up with hints of lemon, herbs and pepper. It dries up almost completely at the finish and what lingers behind are rose hips and sage. It has a good healthy dose of carbonation to help sharpen the dry flavors. The beer is light enough to be refreshing, yet complex enough to hold your interest or even accompany a meal. Here is a beer that would go well with seafood.

As anyone who lives in or around Cincinnati knows, this area was a major destination for German immigrants in the 1800s and therefore has a rich and well-established brewing tradition. A couple of our breweries have been around for a very long time. Christian Moerlein and Hudepohl are two which date back to the 1850s. One which is no longer around is F & J. A. Linck Brewery, which closed in 1860. Before closing, they built a huge lagering cellar underneath their malthouse. When the brewery closed, it was sealed up and forgotten until it was just recently rediscovered. In 2017, Mike Morgan (a beer historian) and Bret Baker (the head brewer at Urban Artifact) began collecting wild yeast samples in hopes of finding something useful. Of the dozens of samples that were taken, only a handful were suitable for brewing, and one stood out above all the others. It was sent to a lab in Chicago where they failed to match it to other known strains of yeast. Remarkably, the pair had discovered a viable brewers yeast that was previously undiscovered. Urban Artifact brewed this beer with it and it was so well-received that they now make it an annual release (Thanks to Morgan Zumbiel for the interesting little article on this beer that was recently published in CityBeat.)