BEER: FRUIT-FORWARD SUMMER FLAVOUR
B.C. brewers working with a fruit-forward palate unique to the region
B.C.’s most decorated brewers are carving out a unique regional identity and flavour palate, one that owes as much to wine culture as it does to European brewing tradition.
It’s no accident that Four Winds Brewing won two gold medals with a pair of beers defined by their fruit-forward character, gentle tartness, and even the occasional infusion of elderflower.
Operis Brett Saison is aged in Okanagan wine barrels, inoculated with the bacterium brettanomyces, and sealed with a real cork, like all the Belgian- style beers in brewmaster Brent Mills’ Eurus series. Sovereign Super Saison is brewed with several strains of yeast and sports an assertive fruity aroma and spicy finish. If that sounds complex and amazing, the brewing community would tend to agree, having named Four Winds as the 2015 Brewery of the Year earlier this month at the Canadian Brewing Awards in Niagara.
Brewers in B.C. are chasing socalled “wild beer” flavours, said Mills. Some of Belgium’s most legendary beers are inoculated with wild yeasts and bacteria that literally float in on the wind from the meadows and orchards around the brewery.
“That’s my dream,” said Mills. “It’s amazing to me and that’s how my favourite beers in the world are made and it’s a completely natural product.”
While recreating the blend of wild microflora occurring naturally in the Belgian countryside is impossible, brewers use an arsenal of commercially available yeast and bacteria strains. And there are some creative companies isolating and regrowing the yeasts and bacteria from Belgian beers in order to give North American brewers even better tools to approximate the wild beer effect, said Mills.
“There seems to be an evolution of beer trends and consumer palates around Vancouver and I love it,” said Mills. “What’s important to me is balance, so we do a few beers that aren’t so much sour as they are tart and that’s really nice on a hot summer day.”
The aforementioned prize-winning Super Saison employs two yeasts for fermentation, lactobacillus bacteria and elderflowers, which results in a brew that requires the vocabulary of winetasting to describe.
“I think that sour beers are gaining a wider audience as people get to know them and explore new things,” said Coal Harbour Brewing head brewer Ethan Allured. “That’s really a great way to bring over wine drinkers, who are used to some of these tart and fruity flavours.”
“Fruit flavours are something that we associate with summer,” he said. And with Belgian yeasts and new hop varieties, brewers can conjure the flavours and aromas of lemon, apple, plum, pineapple and even banana without using any actual fruit at all.
Coal Harbour’s Woodland Witbier is made with orange rind and Szechuan pepper — actually a dried berry — for a unique fruit note with a tongue-numbing, but subtle, spice. The addition of oats to blends of grains, dials back the malt and allows the distinctive flavours from the yeast to come through.
“You get a bright citrus punch that’s really refreshing,” he said. “It has a lot of complexity for how light the beer is.”
Parallel 49 brewmaster Graham With achieves a similar effect in his Corn Hops IPA. By quieting the malt just a little by substituting corn for some of the barley, a refreshing apple note from the hops shines through.