New Glarus Unplugged Enigma

Formerly brewed at New Glarus Brewing Company
Style: Sour Ale
New Glarus, Wisconsin USA

Lovely pour - a murky, date brown body with an ecru ring instead of a head. But I loved the aroma, brett being right behind high-hopping in my mind. It had a funky, sour cherry smell with a whiff of vanilla, a tinge of an aging wood pile, and a touch of rust. All the preceeding simmers down just a nudge in the flavor, the rust becoming fresh cold iron, the cherries souring a bit bit more... all on a calmer scale. Nice tart finish. Very good stuff.

<font size=-4>From <a href=http://www.ratebeer.com/ViewUser.asp?UserID=1 cellar.<font size=-1>

12 oz bottle via trade with hellomynameis. Pours ruby brown with a tiny thin tan head that is barely there. The nose is sweet with hints of cinnamon and spice. The taste is pungent and sour with a big feeling of spiceness and cherries. It isn’t quite sour, more spicy. Its tasty and good, but not the best sour I’ve had to date.

Tan head, murky brown in color. Really nice aroma. Lots of sour cherries soaked in woodsy oak aroma. Some vanilla and maybe even a hint of smoke as well. Really nice and complex in the nose. Nice tart cherry flavor with the oak and vanilla making their presence known on the back end. A good beer that is one of my preferred sours, that is not over the top with the sour puckerness, tartness, or vinegar flavors. The flavors are very nice, subtle, and very complex. Overall a really good beer.

12oz bottle. Murky red-orange darkening to brown, thin film of off white head. Mild acetic tartness, plastic and smoky phenolics in the aroma. Fruitcake melded cooked fruit flavor, tartness just at the thresehold of perception, with vanilla and a malty nuttiness. Canned cherry pie filling in the finish, with lingering almondy sweetness. Mouthfeel is a light medium, slightly astringent.

Sigh, another overated New Glarus beer. This one had a fighting chance however. Smells like a leather belt, smoke, and some vanilla. Taste is sour, with a twang of vinegar, berries, citrus hops, and oak. Malts are kinda weak, yet the beer is rather sweet. Too much carbonation. Dissapointed, yet not so knowing who brewed this.

Dark muddy colored with a fine tan head. Rather odd but pleasant aroma of sourish berries, candy, cake, a bit of marzipan and almond. Flavor is sour but no way near as sour as many other sour ales. Berries, orange, vanilla, cookie and grapefruit in the end. Not the typical sour ale, more candied, but still very nice and unique. I like it a lot! Thanks Paps for this candy in a bottle!

200th rating. Thanks to buckybeer and RagallachMC, who both sent me a trade bottle. Pours a cloudy burnt orange with a medium, pinkish head. Good lacing. Aroma is sour cherries, caramel, brett, wood, vanilla and sweet malts. Taste is heavily sweet and moderately acidic. Finish akin to balsamic vinegar. Very unique. I’m so glad for the extra bottle.

1/9/07. Poured out of 12 oz. bottle, obtained in a trade with 1FastSTi on RateBeer 10/31/06. Muddy cinnamon brown with a pale, off-white, medium-sized and mostly diminishing uneven head. Aroma has strong sour cherry and sour apple notes, suggestions of wet wood and my mom’s old potpourri dishes she scattered around the house, all tinged with a bit of yeasty brightness. Taste is immediately of soft-but-powerful acid-laced wood, waxy with the essence of fleshy tart cherry bits, and holding a surprisingly evident alcohol tickle in the nostrils. The bottom drops out of the flavor quickly on swallowing, leaving an interesting (if not entirely captivating) sprinkle of cinnamon sticks and other assorted wintery candy spices. Medium body holds fairly low carbonation, leaving the mouthfeel actually a bit watery-- could be worse if not for the textural interplay of the light acidity and the equally light tickle of astringency. The spiced notes trail for a good long while beyond anything else. There’s almost a reintroduction of the wood, but it feels like a different kind of woodiness-- this one lacking any real wild yeast accompaniment and almost solely suggesting an astringent glögg-like spice combination. I even got a little black pepper-like bite in the back corners of my mouth. Strongly reminiscent of the New Glarus Sour Brown, Apple Ale, of course Belgian Red, and with a splash of Unibroue Quelque Chose thrown in. This batch is lacking the tasty and intriguing Nutri-Grain Apple bar "fruity cereal" component that I remember being so strong in the samples I had at GABF two years ago. It’s also not nearly as good as I remembered. Pretty drinkable and tasty, but not terribly exciting; somewhat of an introductory offering to the world of Flemish Sour Ale-- for better and for worse.