Avalonia: Ruby
Fox Farm Brewery

2025-02-15
375ml bottle served in a snulip. Batch 1, bottled 10/21. Got it from @Roy_Hobbs in NBS BIF #18.

Pours a slightly hazy purple-red with a medium sized head and surprising retention, leaving a thick and fluffy ring and a dusting across the surface. Smell is very tart, stewed plums, cherry and berry jam.

Taste is cherries and tart jam. Some oak, and a light earthy bitter. A little chardonnay.

Mouthfeel is light, smooth, a little dry. Overall, very tasty.

 

Batch 1, bottled October, 2021.

Beautiful color to this beer. There's a burnt sienna thing going on, but it's how bright and vibrant it is that stands out to me. It positively glows when backlit. A finger of head with medium retention, dissipating to a thin cap and thick ring.

Aroma is equally wonderful. Fresh raspberries take the lead, with cherries and oak faintly in the background. It's hard to describe, but it smells very natural to me, not like somebody dumped puree in. The tartness on the nose is there, but not in your face. Very nice smelling beer.

Taste very much follows the nose. It tastes like fresh raspberries and cherries with a sour kick. Absolutely nothing with this beer tastes artificial. Nicely complex with the raspberries, red currants and cherries working well together with the oak. It's clean and easy drinking. Outstanding beer.

 

This one pours a golden reddish color, with a small head, and lots of lacing.

This smells like tart cherry pie, cranberry, raisin, raspberry, lemon, and white wine.

This is a really nice mix of all of the fruits - Fox Farm is right that the currants give sort of tart cranberry, almost spiced crust thing, that makes this feel kind of like cherry pie with the cherries added. The raspberries don't completely dominate, like they often can in fruited wild ales.

This is light bodied and pretty refreshing, with a great drinkability.

The Avalonia series continues to be one of the fruited saison sets you'll ever come across. This is really nice.

Beautiful ruby red color; ok head retention.

Funky, musty, and sharp aroma, with notes of straw, cherry, oak, vanilla, raspberries.

Very tart and sour on the palate. Layers of fruity berries, accented by funk and wine. A full on sour, without question. Cherries, raspberries, and red currants all add their own character to the result. The melange of flavors is deep and complex, but also natural; cherries can come across overly sweet, syrupy, or even medicinal, but this tastes like fresh fruit, down to the skins and pits.

 

Pours a beautiful red hue - I don't know if I'd say it's Ruby - looks a bit more Carmine or Burgundy to me as it has some purple-ishness going for it. Maybe a little magenta. Get raspberry flesh and skins to go with a semi-lactic yogurt aroma (not in a bad way). It's tart, it tries to give off some jammyness which gives way to a kind of heathery herbal aftertaste. It's overall quite dry. Drinkable too. Acidity levels are restrained as the perceptable acidity from raspberry/currant sours can tend to err too low on the pH scale. I do not get much of the cherry. This is a good fruited wild ale.