Lasting Dose
Speciation Artisan Ales

 

Poured from a can at fridge temp. Pours a nice opaque yellow with a relatively thin layer of white head. Bubbles running up the sides and a few streams up through the middle. The nose is dominated by coffee. After a minute, I start to pick up notes of vanilla, orange, pineapple, green grapes, and a bit of pipe tobacco. Really interesting!

The taste is like nothing I have ever tasted. Sour kick immediately, but a coffee layer hits milliseconds after. Wow. My brain is almost confused by the merger of these flavors. I have had a lot of sours in my life, but never with a strong coffee influence. I like it! After that initial barrage on the palate, I pick up vanilla beans, lemon, granny smith apples, wheat, oak, and a sourdough bread flavor.

Mouthfeel is sour and fairly light. Lingering sourness with tropical fruit notes on the aftertaste. Overall, a really fun experience and a great beer!

 

16oz tallboy can poured into Durobar Charente.

Appearance: Orange bodied beer with a large 3 fingers of dense bone white head. Head has great staying power and fizzes quick down to a small cap, but remains on the top of the beer for a substantial time frame before having no head. Lacing thickly coats the glass and becomes spotty as time passes while sipping on this adult beverage.

Smell: Getting some of the flavors typical of a golden sour beer right away including lemon and green apples and light oak funk. These flavors lead the way for some big floral vanilla notes and hints of rich vanilla pudding. Perhaps a hinting of coffee roast, but it's hard to pick up with the ole' sniffer.

Taste: light sourness; lemon, green apples, and oranges. Next is the sweet and creamy vanilla trying to provide balance to the light sourness. Coffee and dry oak in the finish with lingering light tartness. Coffee is earthy and almost has a dirt flavor it is that earthy; tasting hints of powdered chocolate like the stuff fro Nestle used to stir into to milk to make chocolate milk. It is hard to get a good read on this coffee's flavor profile. As this beer warms up the vanilla gets much bigger. Things seem to balance out fairly decent. The tartness of the golden ale is the strongest flavor in the end with the vanilla not far behind surprisingly enough. The coffee was just an afterthought though as it did not contribute as much flavor as I was expecting it to; not much robustness of the coffee.

Mouthfeel: medium bodied beer with lower carbonation levels. Creamy and soft body that becomes lightly dry in the finish and the more you sip on it. The vanilla creaminess just coats everywhere in your mouth. Low acid levels here. Pleasant drinkability and texture.

Overall: Never had an American Wild ale brewed with vanilla and coffee, time to change that... It's been a while since I have drank a Speciation beer and this one is really different. I felt like if anyone could pull off a beer like this it would be Speciation. The vanilla in this one was impressive and really kept the beer interesting. Coffee was a little bit weak though and I think it might have even come off a little bit weird. It clashed with the golden sour base in my opinion; not to the point of rendering it undrinkable or disgusting, but rather it was a flavor that I have not experienced before and the jury is still out on that whether is was pleasant or not. I would say it landed somewhere in the middle ground.