New Beer Style - Great Lakes Wilds

LMFAO, I guess this is one way to look at those dark horse lambeaks and some of the others I have had. I guess I am not a fan of the great lakes wild.

 

Somebody's feeling brave now that he's no longer in MI...

 

I think it's unfair to lump them all together. Livery might not hit everytime, but what they put out is way beyond what DH offered up yesterday. Livery has an understanding and an ability to make good sours whereas I'm not sure the same can be said for DH. Cherry Bomb from Livery is an excellent sour (IMHO). Bell's has hit strong with Wild One and Raspberry Wild One. Arbor also makes some solid sours in the "Great Lakes" region. Sometimes a brewery misses the target when they start experimenting, and DH's offerings yesterday fit that bill. I'm sure they will try to find out what went wrong and try again.

 

My $0.02: Craft beer is so huge right now that breweries with sturdy reputations like Three Floyds and Dark Horse can bottle f*ck-up batches like Bully Guppy and Aigre Plead the 5th without fear of damaging their brands. That's how ravenous the crowd is. What's concerns me is how many people I heard planned on buying these bottles knowing full well how unbelievably awful they are. To trade, of course.

If a young, upstart brewery put out something like Lambeak Wants Blood Orange it would probably kill their business.

 

Thankfully we sampled both Lambeeks, Militigan, MMMMM, Ginger in your Pants, and Aigre Plead the 5th while waiting in line for bottles. That saved me a lot of money. A lot. Didn't buy any of them. I did enjoy the previous batch of King of the Forest and Whiskey Richard wasn't too bad last time either, so I went for those.

I'm not shy about my homerism and love for Dark Horse, but many of these beers were not good at all. I didn't even want to buy them to trade for fear that the recipient would have a really bad case of traders remorse. I hate when that happens to me and I didn't want to do that to someone else.

 

I find it interesting that they had for sale two, possibly three unintentionally soured beers: Aigre Pt5, Aigre Three Guys, and (I suspect) King of the Forest.

Most breweries would dump them and consider re-evaluating their sanitation and QC. Instead, Dark horse bottled what they could salvage and charged $15/btl for them. That's not to say they're the only ones. Three Floyds is no better, and I'm a self-identifying Floyds homer.

 

The sour three guys was the only unintentional one, I think. I had not hear that the others were, and they were brewed and sold as sours 2 years ago.

 

King of the Forest is purposely soured. Wiggs explained the whole process about that beer to Scot and I on Friday night. It had a pretty cool story. Aigre Plead was intentional as well. It was put put into a spent Lambeak wants Raspbery barrel.

 

Then I stand corrected.

 

You were only a few people ahead of me and probably heard the same comments I did about wanting to buy the Lambeak's and trading them quickly before people found out they were not good. I had the "opportunity" to try all these in line and it made it an easy decision to pass on them. I like that DH is experimenting, and I hope they figure out how to improve on these.

 

The blood orange lambeek was literally the sourest liquid I've ever put in my mouth.

 

I like the updated avatar Nate. How's the new glass eye treating you? You can hardly tell.

 

Could someone chime in on what their feelings were on Lambeak wants Dragon Fruit? I was thinking of posting an ISO, but wasn't sure if it was worth it.

 

Both Lambeeks were pretty terrible unless you are a fan of acetone and off flavors. They both were just unpleasant beers. I was going to buy my full allotment at first, but then got to try them and saved a lot of coin.

 

Also - they are both still available for purchase at the brewery.

 

Thanks for info. Yeah, I saw that they still had them and was interested, especially because unique fruit sours always intrigue me. That's a shame. What about the Oatwine? What the hell is that?

 

Exactly what it sounds like.

 

So a safe to drink barleywine of some sort brewed with oats. That sounds...interesting...