7.1

Appearance - 8 | Aroma - 7 | Flavor - 7 | Texture - 6 | Overall - 7.5

Draft at the brewery on 1/11/14.
Brassy-gold body, has a thin head that is mostly receding. High clarity.
Lovely, reserved aroma has plenty of bacterial influences, with red appleskin notes, light touches of caramel and nutty maltiness (barrel character perhaps?). Hints of vanilla and black pepper give way to the oily, tannic, acetic notes. Certainly not the strength of some of Dupont’s best, but what is there is clean (can you use clean to describe bacterial notes??) and well-presented, with no off-notes.
Apple skin, very well-attenuated juice and plentiful brett greet the palate, with a gentle, somewhat lazy carbonation and some dry, almost nutty pale malts. Acetic sourness finishes it off and light leather and apple notes linger. Almost none of the spices mentioned in the Fallen Apple emerge (cinnamon, nutmeg, allspice). Interesting that some of NS’s beers are full-on spice/herb bombs (Rose) while this one you can barely note it. Fine with me though, the wild yeast and apple flavor is lovely. Could certainly use more maltiness, though. The base beer is just a golden ale, which I don’t think holds up well enough to the cider, wild yeast and barrel treatment. Not quite enough body. Alcohol, I believe, was somewhere in the 8 to 9% range.