curious has anyone traded for this lately if so what it take also how is this beer holding up? I've notice that the American wilds start to fall off after 3-4 yrs could a one off cantillon do it like a crinaza Helena?
Is Beatification actually an AWA instead of an "American Gueuze"? Is it an unblended "American Lambic" so to speak? There seem to be a lot of people claiming that the first two batches of Beatification are amazing. That would indicate that the AWA cstegory as a whole may not be faulty, but instead just some AWAs. From all accounts that I've heard/read, Veritas 004 is still awesome. Just like in Belgian Fruited Lambics, the fruit has started to fade. However, the beer as a whole is still good, right? Back to Led Zeppelin II and MoaS before I was rudely interrupted by this thread.
The man makes fine points. Our current classifications of polyorganism fermented beer is pretty faulty in terms of aging. Many folks will call any american brewed wild beer an AWA, and then say it cannot age for more than a year or two without falling off. Beat/Deviation are psuedowild fermented, and even Vinnie says that there are a host of non-commercial laboratory bugs in all the RR AWAs. Where do they fall? Is our generalizations of AWA and lambic just a bunch of ass wind? Hows this- What are the Allagash Coolship beers? Coolship chilled, wild fermented, but americanized grist bill. What about the barrels of wort that Anchorage let sit open in a blueberry field? Traditional grist, chilled in a plate chiller, but left open to the elements with a traditional grist. What about Temptation? a beer made with commercial bacteria and yeast pitches, but found to contain many bugs not added on purpose. What about my homebrewed lambics? americanized grist, plate chilled, fermented with bottle cultures from belgian lambics. None are lambic in the strict sense, but all have elements that would steer clear of conceptualized American Wild Ale, a beer fermented in a steel tank with only the commercial pitches. Ok, enough masturbation for the morning. To the OP- Not sure what it's trading for, but the damn thing is pretty delicious if it was aged correctly, falling of if not seems to be the consensus.
I think American Wild Ales is a catch-all term for beers that are fermented by microbes other than saccharomyces. Now this can be Brett, Pedio, Acetobacter, Lacto, etc But I think what sets apart Lambic from "lambic"/"wild" ales is the innoculation by wild yeast and the process of blending. Both in my mind seem to be very important. This is because as spontaneously fermented beers mature, different organisms dominate the culture and add their contributions to it. It is living, inhabited by trillions of organisms that in a symbiotic equilibrium. This complex mix is what allows a Drie Fonteinen Geuze to continue to improve over time because the beer is constantly evolving. The other thing is blending. Jean Van Roy and Armand, know the characteristics of a beer today that will make it taste great in 5 years. Not a lot of American brewers have an assortment of barrels to mix to make the perfect blend or the experience to do it well. I think they'll get better and I think that brewers that now just add brett or lacto to a beer might start experimenting with allowing small portions of their beers to be innoculated with wild yeast and experimenting with other old world, trational techniques. This hopefully will lead to better wild beers
I didn't think Deviation was all that great when I had it on draft, but I've heard that kegs are worse than bottles (I can't really come up with a good rationale for that, though). Beatification B2 and B3, however, were both significantly better than I'd typically expect for an AWA of that age. In my mind anything that's spontaneously fermented and blended has a chance of aging. Things that use commercial yeasts just don't. YMMV.
I had a similar experience recently. I've had Deviation a few times, and the one I had on draft seemed to have fallen off. FYI: Bottleworks had Deviation on shelves recently. $85/bottle.
I know you're joking, but if I was able to get my hands on a bottle, I would have offered it $4$ for some reasonable wants.
But as I said wild fermentation is used in the inoculated brews. RR doesn't pitch Kloekera Apiculata, but it sure as hell shows up in their beers. Same with Acetobacter and Oenococcus and I'm sure more. They blend dozens of barrels together at a time to bottle a batch, and in doing so select which barrels to blend, which to age longer, which to dump. So we have wild bacteria and blending happening... I see a WIDE difference between a true lambic and something like Surly Five. That's easy to see and tell, but the difference between Beatification and Drie Font is much narrower. Both are open air inoculated, both are wild fermented, and both host to hundreds if not thousands of different bugs. There is nothing magical about the Senne valley that makes lambic lambicy.
Kloekera, and enteric bacteria can live in the wood of the barrels and are floating in the air. You might find traces of some of those organisms in Pliny, but that beer has high ABV and hopping to keep them from surviving... There is something about the organisms in the Senne valley that makes lambic, lambic. To say there isn't is to say that there isn't the influence of terroir on beer. The species of microbes and their relative proportion in the beer have a big effect on the beer. The climate of Payottenland and the SF Bay area are fairly similar so you would expect similar profiles of bugs in the air especiailly since both are close to agricultural areas. However, you cannot say that airborne bug innoculation of the same wort in Topeka, Kansas or Bogota, Colombia will make a beer that tastes similar to Lambic
The bottle we had over the weekend was the first time I had it-- but I thought it was quite good. I'd say certainly on par or better than Izzy, Veritas 007, DDG, and any Cable Car. Whales are fun to try, but they don't chamge your life at all. It's still just beer. For my money, I'd rather just have a 3F gueuze.
Hey, I haven't gone all Syd Barrett on BA just yet.....give me until early December. There has to be a wildcard in the CA BAs-Gone-Wild pool.
