Just drinking a delicious jolly pumpkin bam noir on this fine thursday evening. This beer is delicious but should it really be classified as a saison/farmhouse ale? I had a few different american wild ales yesterday and I find bam slightly different but it still gets some tart and funk like the wild ales do with a slight sour finish. Thoughts?
I just tried this the other night as well. I was kind of disappointed cause I thought it would be a little more sour. It was just alright in my opinion. I really like Calablaza and LaRoja though.
It's a JP saison, so it's not supposed to be super-funky. However, it is super tasty and does fulfill some of the sour itch for those who are looking for something a little lighter. I just had one on tap and it is really, really tasty and refreshing.
pretty much all of the JP beers color outside the lines as far as typical styles go, which is one of my favorite things about them. most of the styles their beers are filed under on here can be a bit misleading imo.
I do not necessarily think one should confuse farmhouse with saison. While they certainly can be far to separate more often than not, thinking of them as on in the same can really be misleading. Jolly Pumpkin does shoot for a recipe that is a bit more rustic in each of their Bam's. They use a Belgian yeast and many techniques and methods that are similar to the historic farmhouse ales. I really see nothing that is not farmhouse about it.
Good to know. The only other JP i have had before was their Pumpkin beer which was one of my favorites.
Jolly Pumpkin beers are all aged with wild yeast/bacteria inoculated in their oak barrels. All of their beers will become much more sour/funky with a year+ of age on them. As Kzoo stated much more rustic/restrained when fresh.
Absolutely not. We have had many aged JP beers at our SE Mich tastings and I would say nearly all are best fresh. Oro does age beautifully though.
http://beeradvocate.com/community/threads/march-cellar-reviews.2235/page-2#post-104312 We just did a pretty big JP tasting... I took some notes for the sake of comparison. (of ourselves, I posted them on the last day of March in the 'March cellar reviews' thread, so no one saw them!) We had many more JP brews on which I didn't take notes-- amongst them were some Bam noire- fresh vs 4 year old. The group was split pretty evenly as to which was better, but I prefered the aged one.
Taste is subjective. My point is that they CAN be cellared to achieve more of the funky/sour notes that some people think are lacking. I almost always buy them in pairs, drink one fresh and cellar the other. Even better yet, try to find them in a dusty corner of a store cellared for you! Cheers
