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Ferment Brewing Company

Pours a dark gold colour that's not quite mostly clear but not particularly crisp. Beautiful big pile of rocky white head that recedes slowly leaving all kinds of patterning on the glass.

Nose is clean bready malts and straw, with some earthy grassy hops over the top.

Flavour is rounded malts that almost remind me of corn leading to rich doughiness, with hops that bring an oily lime bitterness (though is that the sumac?), and still that earthy grassy character. The finish is sharply bitter, and again I'm not super well versed on sumac at baseline, so it's possible that that is what's contributing this oily sharp flavour.

The body is almsot creamy up front, contributing to that impression of corn, and continues to be surprisingly full bodied throughout. Aside from teh bitter finish which I am attributing to the sumac, it's relatively crisp, and teh bitterness at the back end lingers pleasantly.

This is an interesting one, and I can see where the inspiration came from, but I don't foresee it spawning a bevy of copycats. The sumac works... sort of. It's a creative twist, but is not some revelation.

neat lager here, brewed with sumac, which is what drove me to order one when we were passing through hood river, but that element of this is really minimal, lending no color, very little aroma, and just a subtle flavor nuance to the beer, this is a classic lager long before its a sumac beer, definitely like it, but also was really hoping for something a bit more distinctive and forward on the sumac, still cool, and very well made. golden and bubbly from the tap with good clarity and some shine, lasting inch of white head crowing it, looks like a nice summer lager even though the abv is a little stronger than pure session. the nose has slight floral character, but to me it seems more hops than sumac, a grassy aspect too, a lot of minerals even faint metallics, but still clean to me, with a noticeable lager yeast profile and quite a bit of malt coming through too, pils and pale, slight toast. the flavor is about the same, a little up front citrus which could be sumac derived, but it doesnt quite have that wild herbal tang to it i was looking for, none of the red fruitiness, maybe a different kind of sumac than i know, i think there are several. as a drinking lager this is nice, cool proportions, not boring at all, well hopped but still balanced, and with some structure, i think the carbonation is great, they got a lot from the malt on this, and the overall refinement is high, but it does feel just a bit heavy for a hot day, and the part that was supposed to make this interesting is too subtle to really make much of an impression. nice with their tasty salmon burger on the patio, but not the unique beer i was hoping it would be. always fun to visit here, things seem to be going really well for them!