Beers are more than just a drink for the serious beer enthusiast. It becomes a process, an event, a moment to enjoy, remember, and think about. For the beer drinker who has become an enthusiast, a beer is something they link with memory, with experience, with an event. For me, a beer is never just a thing you throw in the back of your throat, that is what you do with water. (But I guess, those who are into artisanal water will claim the same for their experience of water? To each their own.)
I have also been wholly taken over by the world of wild fermentation. It is a fascinating world that never stops amazing me. I have made some wild fermented beers with ingredients such as pineapple, and I have tried to make some heavy beers in my brewing youth. But since then, I have stuck with sourdough baking, always trying to figure out the whole thing about sourdough.
When I started to drink the Soul Barrel wild fermented beers, my beer drinking world also kind of collapsed; these beers really challenged my perception of what a beer is, could be, and will be. Forever my mind will link the best beers in Africa with these lambic sour beers. It is a craft few can harness, as wild fermentation is unpredictable, wild, and has a mind of its own! But that is what makes experimenting with it so fun.
Last week, I started my “countdown” to 100 beers. This week, I will carry on with the small series to 100. Herewith the “menu”:
# 94 Ale of Origin: Spontaneous Sour Beer (8.5% ABV)
# 95 Wild African Soul: Sorghum Farmhouse Beer (6% ABV)
PART 3:
# 96 East India Pale: Brett IPA (7.1 % ABV)
# 97 Old London Porter – Historical Brett Ale (10% ABV)
PART 4:
# 98 Bourbon Wood: Barrel Aged Old Ale (11.2 % ABV)
# 99 Smoked Black Oil: Barrel Aged Imperial Stout (13% ABV)
# 100 Icenator Eisbock (20.4 % ABV)
Without wasting too much time, let me get to the tasting notes of these serious and delicious beers!
Ale of Origin: Spontaneous Sour Beer
(Winner of Best beer in Africa 2024)
Lambic | 8.5 % ABV | 13 IBUs
This is a truly and uniquely South African beer. It uses only South African ingredients, even the wild yeast which they captured from the very location where they brew this beer! Malts from the wheat/barley region of Caledon, hops which I think was grown in George, and water from the mountains in the area, this beer is really a signature of what local can offer and produce. No wonder it won best beer in Africa!
The beer had incredible caramel notes with some sour undertones. I could not wait for that first sip. I got the same caramel notes, with some sourness coming through. It also had strong fruity ale notes on the first sip, not a lot of bitterness (it was very low on IBUs).
This beer really challenged my beer categories, with so many new and complex flavours coming through. Much more complex than any beer I really had before. This beer is also a lot less sour than the previous week’s beer. It is almost like this was the more mature one of the two. It also had the notes they mentioned on the side of the beer, orange peel, fresh mango, a beautiful and delicate maltiness from toasted malt.
Even though this beer had a lot of alcohol in it, I could not immediately pick this up. All in all, it was beautiful.
Wild African Soul: Sorghum Farmhouse Beer
Wild Sorghum Aged Beer | 6% ABV | 8 IBUs
This was an interesting beer. Local indigenous beers in South Africa are made from malted sorghum, a local grain grown in many parts of Africa. Few breweries use this product, for reasons I am not sure. But it is quite readily available, and I also made bread with some of the malted grains before. It has a really unique taste and smell.
The brewers at Soul Barrel Brewing Co. mix the traditional beer then with other sour beers, also aged for a couple of years. Again, this really pushed the boundary of what beers can and should be! But I love this, as so many brewers don’t experiment enough.
The beer was also very similar to the others, yet slightly different? It was a lot more smoother, and it had a lot less bitterness. It was more malty because of the different malts (obviously). But because I drank the other beers so close to this one, I really wondered how much it was different from them? I am not sure. Because this was my first deep dive into lambics and sours, my palate and categories in my brain are still trying to figure everything out.
Postscriptum, or Almost to 100
In the end, we expand our mind and our palates by challenging ourselves just like we would challenge our bodies with endurance running or going to the gym. So too we can grow our world by trying something that cannot fit into neat boxes.
For now, happy drinking, and keep well!
All of the writings and opinions in the post are my own, albeit inspired by these strange beers. The photographs are also my own, taken with my Nikon D300.
