Today our new beers come to us from Portland OR from a brewery you may not be familiar with: Little Beast Brewing. Little Beast was founded by Charles Porter (25-Years of brewing experience) and Brenda Crow (culinary arts graduate and expert in the business of specialty food), and I think you’ll find that this combination has resulted in some pretty exciting beers...and today we’ll be sampling two…so off we go.
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| Image Courtesy of Little Beast |
Up first is the new Wild Island Hazy Brett Double IPA. This beer will be Little Beasts first hazy IPA as well as the brewery’s very first can release. This beer is actually a collaboration with Moska Brewing (Rocklin, CA) and it is brewed with 6.5-pounds of hops per barrel (kettle-hopped with Citra, dry-hopped with Simcoe & Pacific Gem and NO bittering hops). I was really excited to sample a hazy IPA with brettanomyces claussenii yeast (3-month fermentation) so I couldn’t resist sampling this one first. Wild Island pours a hazy golden color as expected and while there are some funky and fruity ester aromas, the hops really lead the way. I love a hoppy-forward aromatic beer and the combination of hazy appearance and tropical fruit aromas made the beer really appealing. I found flavors of mango, passion fruit, apricot and pineapple with just the right amount funk to make it all balance out nicely. The finish was dry but still juicy and the mouthfeel made for a really satisfying and hoppy feel to the beer. With no bittering hops used, I think I was expecting a much lesser hop presence (or a dominant sweetness), but I was happy to find that overall this beer is really hoppy and at 8.9%-ABV just a little boozy as well. I think this is a really unique beer and I was thankful that it was packaged in 16oz cans so I had the opportunity to “sample” more.
Up next we sampled the new Rhūs Jūs Wildcrafted Sumac & Elderflower Sour Ale. Now I’ll admit that there’s a lot going on just in the name of this beer, so lets break it down. Rhūs Jūs is what Little Beast calls a “place-based, mixed-culture sour ale, fermented with Saccharomyces and Lactobacillus.” The beer was then racked onto the red cones of foraged (from Hood River and Tualatin river valleys) staghorn Sumac. If that’s not enough to get you intrigued, the beer is also brewed with elderflower and elderberries. As soon as you open the 375ml bottle, you can’t miss the deep red color. This is a really pretty beer so take time to just admire it while you sort through the herbal and citrus aromas. There is a lot going on with the aroma of this beer and the longer we lingered, the more we found we liked. The beer is definitely a sour ale and that sharpness leads the way when you sip, but again the complexity that the Sumac, elderflower and elderberries bring to the mix was really unique. I’m not sure I would have identified each flavor, but there is a really nice play of sour/sharp and herbal with just a hint of balancing elderberries. As the beer warmed, I really liked the lemon and apple flavors that jumped in and as Little Beast indicates, I’m quite sure this beer will develop even more if you can cellar a bottle or two.
Overall I really enjoyed sampling Little Beast Wild Island Hazy Brett Double IPA and Rhūs Jūs Wildcrafted Sumac & Elderflower Sour Ale. To say both beers were unique and enjoyable would be a tremendous understatement. These beer were hard to describe, but in a very good way and as always, be sure to try them for yourself…and when you do, be sure to let us know what YOU think.
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