Brett Peat Daydream

(thanks for sharing!) Sampled draft @ The Beavertown Extravaganza 2017. Day 2. Murky ugly brown. Nose is malt vinegar with peat, lovely, faintest smoked caramel malt. Taste is great malt vinegar with peat, acidic but in a good way, pat, smoked malt,… Thicker malt vinegar body. I should hate it but amazingly it actually worked for me.

Keg at beaverfest. Pours deep orange, nose is smoked sausage, funk, peat, taste is really sour, dry, smoky, juicy citrus.

Draught at ’Cause Beer Loves Food. Daring blend of a peated barleywine, a Bamberg style Rauchbier and a ’Bretted’ sour ale, a combination of flavours I haven’t seen thus far. Off-white, initially moussy but quickly dissolving an eventually all but vanishing head over a misty peach blonde beer with vaguely amber brownish hue. Intense aroma, unusual and challenging as expected, with moist peat (even peated whisky) dominating initially, less iodine-like than is often the case in peated beers and actually very elegant and inviting, combined with impressions of smoked apricots, grape peel, stale sweat, ’horseblanket’ funkiness, green olives, soggy bread, smoked bacon, seaweed, dried lemon peel. Intense taste with estery fruitiness in the onset, lots of gooseberry, unripe stonefruit and sour crabapple, drying tartness and even sharper lemony acidity dominating, yoghurty especially in the middle with a green olive-like umami accent, smooth and softly carbonated, bit vinous even, over a bready and very lightly caramelly malt backbone; finish is brightly coloured with peat (Islay whiskies) in the middle, leathery and hayish Brett to the sides and smoked meat underneath, while the tartness continues to dry the back of the mouth, with some juicy fruitiness and a dash of warming alcohol in its wake. Wow, this is something else - a very daring combination of intense flavors indeed, touching the extremes in umaminess and tartness with very low sweetness remaining, though just enough of it is kept to bring the much more challenging aspects to a happy conclusion. It takes swagger to create something like this and present it to your consumers, but Ducato has created beers of world class greatness before. This will not be to anyone’s liking, but taken into consideration the fact that it achieves balance in all its extremes and shows intelligence, craftmanship and complexity while doing so, this is clearly a great piece of work in my book. Blending can be just as refined an art as brewing itself - think geuze - and this is a wonderful combination of flavors all reinforcing each other rather than working against each other, as is usually the case in those (very) rare beers that dare to confront sourness with smokiness and / or peatedness. A revelation.