Amazing Sour Beers at the Almanac & Jester King Sour Valentine Dinner

SF Beer Week 2017 at Central Kitchen

Dave Jensen (beer47)
beer47

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Each year for SF Beer Week, I keep an eye out for any beer dinner organized by Jesse Friedman of Almanac Beer Co. I’ve been attending his dinners, off and on, since the days of Beer & Nosh dinners before Almanac and I’ve never been disappointed.

Jesse likes to say his beer dinners are an excuse to drink the beer he wants (in this case Jester King) and eat the food he likes from his favorite chefs. The approach seems to be working because once again, this was a fantastic dinner with amazing food and wonderful beer from both Almanac and Jester King, including Jester King’s greatly sought after SPON.

Another enjoyable aspect of the evening was listening to the brewers talk about their beer and the chef talk about his food. On hand for this dinner was Jesse Friedman, Brewmaster & Co-Founder of Almanac Beer Co., Thomas McNaughton, executive chef of Central Kitchen, and Averie Swanson, Head Brewer of Jester King Brewery. It’s not every day that you get to hear some of the best sour beer brewers talk about their beer at the same time. It’s fun to learn details about the beer. For instance, SPON is spontaneously fermented in a coolship, a flat, open fermentation vessel.

Jesse Friedman (Almanac), Averie Swanson (Jester King), Thomas McNaughton (Central Kitchen)

The menu for the evening was amazing and the sour beer pairings were superb. The menu and pairing were as follows:

snacks from our larder
Jester King: Petit Prince & Das Wonderkind
Almanac: Saison Brettaville & High Esteem

trout crudo
winter citrus, yellow beets, sea urchin aoli
Jester King: Blanc du Bois
Almanac: Grand Cru White

bone marrow risotto
parsnip, fava leaves, fresh horseradish
Jester King:
Almanac:

mixed roast of lamb
slow roasted leg & pistachio crusted ribs
Jester King: Nocturn Chrysalis
Almanac: Blueberry Jack & Farmer’s Reserve Blackberry

whipped potato
smoked butter, chicken cracklings, chive

coal roasted root vegetables
preserved lemon yogurt & pickled pears

buttermilk panna cotta
apricot & candied fennel
Jester King: Aurelian Lure
Almanac: Valley of the Hearts Delight

The beer was also a treat and after this even I realized that I probably always knew: sour beer is even better with food. Here are my notes about the beers served at the dinner:

High Esteem by Almanac

This is s hoppy steam beer made in collaboration with Sudwerk made with Motueka and Simcoe hops. It has notes of citrus, grapefruit, grass, and a little passionfruit. It is cloudy and looks like orange plus grapefruit juice. Fruity, not a sour beer, and has a hint of pith-like bitterness.

Le Petit Prince by Jester King

Le Petit Prince is a 2.8% farmhouse table beer with a surprising amount of flavor and mouthfeel for a low ABV beer. It also features wonderful artwork on the label of The Little Prince

Das Wunderkind! by Jester King

This is a blended saison made with freshly hopped beer blended with sour beer from oak barrels. It has notes of citrus, banana, and dry hoppy nose with the typical saison aromas and flavors. It also has a really nice effervescence. This is a really good citrus-hoppy saison.

Grand Cru White by Almanac

This is a beer and wine hybrid made with Muscat Blanc grapes and fresh apricots then aged in oak for over a year . The aroma is fruity with lemon-like acidity, herbal qualities, and notes of muscat grapes, and apricots. The flavor has a fresh sourness with a drop of sweetness. It’s fruity and delicious with just a little funky sourness to it. This beer was made in collaboration with Paul Einbaum of The Morris restaurant.

Bière de Blanc du Bois by Jester King

As a corollary to the Almanac Grand Cru White, this beer is also made with wine grapes, spefically Texas grown Blanc du Bois grapes. The grapes were added to “finished” barrel-aged sour beer and then re-fermented. Head Brewer Averie Swanson mentioned that they wanted to emulate an “orange wine” with this beer. It has a sweet grape aroma with some funky and farmy qualities. It has a sweet flavor with a citrusy sourness. It is medium to heavy-bodied beer that one could describe as thick with a low level of carbonation.

Sunshine & Opportunity by Almanac

This saison is made with wheat and oats and fermented with house yeast, brettanomyces, and lactobacillus. Finally, it is dry hopped with Citra. The aroma is pineapple, citrus, and barnyard. The flavor is a little bitter, a little sour, and a little sweet.

SPON Méthode Gueuze Blend 4 by Jester King

This beer was a treat not only because it considered hard to find, a whale, but also because it a wonderful, high quality sour beer. SPON is a Belgian-style gueuze inspired by the beers of Cantillon and that inspiration worked because this is a very good sour. This beer is spontaneously in a 15 barrel coolship fermentation vessel and aged in oak barrels. The oldest beer in the bottle is 4 years old. The results are amazing. The aroma has funk, farm, barnyard, and a hint of lemon acidity. SPON is definitely sour but it is not super dry and overly tart. It has a nice balance and could be described as a more mellow version of Cantillon Grand Cru.

You can read more about this beer on the Jester King blog.

Farmer’s Reserve Blackberry by Almanac

This sour blonde ale is made with blackberries from Watsonville and aged in oak barrels. It is funky, herbal, barnyard, and fruity with lot’s of dark berry qualities. Flavor is tart, dry, and not sweet. It hasa clean sourness with a little complexity.

Blueberry Jack by Almanac

The Almanac website calls this a “a psychedelic trip to flavor town.” 😁This beer is a collaboration with Stillwater Artisanal Ales. It is a blonde sour ale aged in oak with California grown blueberries & blackberries. After the beer is done maturing, it is dry hopped with Citra, Mosaic, El Dorado, Simcoe, Galaxy, Nugget, and Sterling hops. The aroma of this beer is amazing. It is very dank with notes of candied citrus, orange Smarties (I use this descriptor a lot with Citra hops), blueberry, blackberry, and a little pine. It is a little sweet, a little sour, and a whole lot of awesome!

Nocturn Chrysalis by Jester King

This is a barrel aged beer refermented in the barrel by adding Marion blackberries from Oregon. The aroma has a deep botanical quality almost like juniper berries and gin. It is also fruity with notes of dark berries, wood, earth, and a little funk. It is sweet, a little sour, and fruity.

At the end of the night I stopped taking notes on the beer so you will just have to seek out Jester King’s Aurelian Lure

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