Bones Help Nobody
Tall Poppy Brewing Company in Kontich, Antwerp, Belgium 🇧🇪
Farmhouse - Sour Saison Regular Out of Production|
Score
6.85
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"I cannot date because of a snow curse, I pray Santa helps me"
Santa cannot hlep. She did not know, but Santa was her husband. Santa is bones. Bones help nobody.
- From "The Christmas on Christmas", screenplay by the Hallmark's Bot.
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Appearance - 6 | Aroma - 6 | Flavor - 6 | Texture - 6 | Overall - 6.5
Appearance: Brewed 24/10-2021. Dark brown, tiny light tan head. Aroma: Dark fruits, prunes. Some malt and earthy. Taste: Dark, tart fruits. Some malt, warming. Tart aftertaste. Bought: Galerie FRITS (Antwerp), 330 ml, €?.?? Info: 22/10-2024, BB: 31/10-2025
Appearance - 6 | Aroma - 7 | Flavor - 7 | Texture - 6 | Overall - 8
Kerstbier Festival. Clear dark reddish brown beer with a beige lacing. Aroma of dark red fruits, caramel, raisins, wood. Taste of raisins, red wine, grapes, wood.
Appearance - 6 | Aroma - 8 | Flavor - 8 | Texture - 6 | Overall - 8
Gents Bier Festival 2023 - Very dark brown colour. Aroma and flavour of dried fruits. Raisins. Slight sharpness and funk too.
Appearance - 8 | Aroma - 8 | Flavor - 7 | Texture - 8 | Overall - 6
Another puzzling creation by one of Antwerp's most inspired and passionate craft brewers, Tall Poppy; a kveik-fermented quadrupel, apparently also intended as a Norwegian style kornøl, but since traditional kornøl (typically brewed in central western Norway) is a blonde beer style, this idiosyncratic Tall Poppy beer seems to be best interpreted as a hybrid of kornøl and quadrupel - omitting the fact that 'real' kornøl is a raw beer as well and infused with juniper branches, like so many ancient northern European beers. Whatever it is, it produces a stable, medium sized, pale yellowish beige, tiny-bubbled and moussy but slowly breaking and eventually dissolving head over a misty, very dark chocolate brown robe with ruddy-amberish edges. Aroma of old oxidized balsamico, soggy wholemeal bread, dried prune plum, beef stock cube, damp autumn leaves, 'oude jenever', damp earth, milk gone sour, old cloves, hints of pine resin, medlar, a sulfuric element, soaked porcini, raw red cabbage, black radish peel, mud. Estery onset with notes of prune plum, fresh fig and medlar, sweetish but surrounded by a deep, persistent lactic tartness, never sharply sour but still quite powerfully drying and even a bit astringent - one of the kornøl elements I guess, because this beer style allows for some lactic 'inoculation'. This lactic sourness, with a fruity, grapey edge, accompanies a slick, rounded dark malt body, containing impressions of old brown bread, unsugared walnut cake and a dash of old moldy hazelnuts; the finish has a certain vinous quality, with lingering dark-fruity elements and ongoing lactic and 'balsamic' sourness, even becoming a bit more outspoken and - combined with the dark malts - 'misleading' the drinker towards 'oud bruin' territory, with a certain passionfruity aspect to it. Low in hoppiness, this odd beer ends with warming, gin-like alcohol, lingering breadiness and fruitiness, phenolic spicy notes (clove) and, more than anything, a very earthy quality, 'muddy' and musty, with beef stock-like umami notes trailing behind. The hops, when all this has passed, do still provide a late, deep, earthy, damp-leafy bitter note all the way at the back, too. Residual dark sugars are present as well, but get outbalanced by the lactic sourness. Complex for sure, but I am not convinced that in this case, the complexity is carried out well: there is a deep, murky, dim earthiness to this beer that I have trouble appreciating (I never appreciate it in other beers either) and the whole thing ends rather astringent and unbalanced. Feels unfinished, crude and, indeed, 'raw', though I am unsure at this moment whether it was actually brewed 'raw' or not; the 'oud bruin'-like quality is in any case very strong here, even if was never intended that way. Weird, even to Tall Poppy standards, but too earthy and musty for its own good - whatever the brewer was intending here, I am sure it could have left the brewery as a better and more alluring beer than this, if fermentation had been kept under control. All things considered, and now that I could finally bring myself to opening this challenging bottle: feels like an 'oud bruin' at double (or indeed, perhaps, quadrupel) strength and the kornøl aspect, if ever there was one, has effectively been nullified by that overall effect. Puzzling concept to begin with, and after drinking the actual beer, I am still puzzled - not even sure whether I like this oddity or not... Few breweries in Belgium have the guts to produce something like this so have a point for that, but whatever the intention was, it is still a diamond in the rough, in dire need of elegance, technical finetuning and (strange as it may sound in this context) balance.