This is California’s Ale Industries take on the Berliner Weisse, a German wheat beer with a characteristic sour flavour. It was once very popular but has since nearly disappeared – fortunately, the booming craft beer industry has helped bring it back a little more as well. It is typically a pretty low ABV beer; this particular one comes in at 4.5%. Ale Industries is a small craft brewery in Northern California with limited availability – it’s gone as far north as Oregon at this point but even there it is hard to find. From the website, it appears they have a bit of a penchant for sour ales and interesting, barrel aged brews.
The East Bayliner Weisse is brewed with two infamous yeast strings: Brettanomyces and Lactobacillus. Both these constituents tend to provide a sour flavour, the brett tending to give a ‘barnyard’ quality while the lactic acid adds to the acidity of the brew. These ingredients need to be exercised with great care if the right balance is to be achieved in the end result.
The beer pours a slightly hazy straw-orange colour. The brettanomyces and lactobacillus yeasts are dominant in the smell, along with oranges, apricots and bread. Taking a sip, my first reaction is being pleased by the crisp and smooth mouthfeel with initial onset of gentle puckering sour and wine-like acidity… similar to what I’d expect in a nice gueuze. The taste then moves on to something different, something new to me – lots of orange fruit, peach, some citrus as well. The tail end is something like sour lemon.
After being disappointed by a couple German-style sours recently I was pleasantly surprised by this bottle – it has better balance than a lot of ‘funky’ beers, albeit slightly simple. The sourness does not have any displeasing notes – the ‘funk’ isn’t coming across as gym socks or anything like that, as it sometimes can.
Beer Scout 