π Peach Pi
The Exchange Brewery

330mL bottle
Served in a wine glass
Bottled: June 12, 2024

This beer pours amber with golden highlights and a slight haze to it. It is topped with an inch of fleeting tan head that left no lacing.

Nice peach aroma to go along with a great sour smell. Slightly funky, but a real nice sour aroma.

Wonderful sourness. The peach is there just enough to be tasted, but it still lets the sourness of this beer come through.

Thinner bodied with a dry mouthfeel

Well done sour with just the right amount of peaches.

At Erie St. Gastropub on Erie St. East in nearby downtown Windsor; on tap and chilled, 4oz. in a flight of four beers. My fourth beer from the Niagara-on-the-Lake, Ontario brewery, and for 2025. Leading an outing of my Responsible Beer Drinking Club...

 

330 mL crown-capped green bottle from the LCBO; dated Mar 27 2019 with a note that it can be "aged for up to 2 years". Listed at 6.4% and served slightly chilled.

Pours a hazy golden-orange colour, generating a paltry half-centimetre of loose, bubbly white froth that disintegrates as quickly as it appeared. A thin collar is the only remnant worth mentioning, with very little in the way of lace produced. OK, so it's not a looker: I can work past that. Leathery, Brett-y funk comes through on the nose, as do notes of oak wood, white wine, vanilla, cinnamon and mild lactic acidity. Smells like a wild ale, for sure - but a little more peach/stone fruit presence would do this a world of good: as it stands, I'm barely getting even a hint of tart peachy goodness.

Definitely more of a wild ale than a fruit beer, not that I'm complaining. Hints of tart peach and apricot juiciness muddle together with notes of lemon-y lactic sourness, leather and white wine; suggestions of oak wood and vanilla also crop up, with some light vinegar/acetic acid developing towards the finish. More stone fruit, wine barrel and dilute vinegar linger into a slightly tart aftertaste that fades within a second or two. Light in body, with low carbonation levels that limply brush against the palate; feels gentle and smooth in the mouth, with excellent drinkability for the style.

Final Grade: 3.99, a B+. I don't know what it is about peaches and the brewing process, but almost every peach beer I've tried has been lacking in the flavour of said fruit - perhaps the constituent molecules that comprise peach flavour are just very easily fermented out? The Exchange's Peach π actually fares better in this respect than most others, in that it does have a discernible peach note... but it's mostly the sourness and barrel characteristics that do the heavy lifting here. An interesting, quality sour that is worth looking into - it's a little expensive, but still reasonably priced, given the fact that it's barrel-aged. I'll probably pick up another bottle for the cellar.