A Sawdust City Brewery Taste Adventure – Round 4: Coriolis Effect Sour Ale and An Ale of Two Cities Sour Oat IPA

Howdy, fellow beerficianados!

Welcome to the fourth and final installment of our series focusing on beer that I acquired during a trip to the Sawdust City Brewery in Gravenhurst, Ontario. My mouth has been on a wild ride, and it’s about to get even wilder. This week I’ll be looking at two sours that are available from Sawdust City.

Sour beer seems to be a bit of a trend in the craft beer world. It seemed as though last year everyone just wanted to crank out Kölsches, the year before people were going bonkers over a bunch of Saisons, and every year prior to that was just an over-hopping arms race. This year it’s sours. And hey, just between you and me? Enough with the sours, already, am I right?

Regardless of my preconceived notions about sour beer, here are my thoughts on a few of them.

Coriolis Effect Sour Ale

The Can: This attractive orange can features a compelling line-drawing and a striking use of contrast. It also features the words “Berliner Weisse”, which confused the hell out of me and made me make a huge mistake, which I’ll get to in a moment.

The Colour: As you can see in the above image, the beer pours very clear and very light. It looks great with a lemon in it, but we’ll talk more about the lemon in a minute.

The Flavour: Okay, so I read the “Berliner Weisse” part and thought “Oh, this is a white beer, so I should put a lemon in there.” I wasn’t really paying attention and didn’t read where it says “Soured Light Beer”. In my defense, it says that in very small print and I am a busy man. Anyway, I squeezed a bunch of lemon into this motherfucker and then took a big sip and it very nearly blew my lower jaw clear across the room. This is sour beer. It really definitely did not need a bunch of lemon juice in it. Holy smokes, was this ever sour.

The Verdict: I’m not sure that I can give this beer a fair appraisal because I think that I may have soured it beyond the points of comfortable enjoyment. It was refreshing but also torturous. I finished every drop. It almost killed me. I might not like sour beer, guys.

An Ale Of Two Cities Sour Oat IPA

The Can: I truly enjoy the shade of blue that was chosen to adorn this can of beer that I was afraid to drink and waited until the last possible minute to open (which is to say that it was the last beer that I had in the house).

The Colour: I really only pour beer into a glass if I’m going to throw a lemon slice into it, so I’m not sure of what colour this was. I expected it to be the colour of pain.

The Flavour: This beer is quite sour, but not as punishingly sour as the extra-lemon-y sour beer that I presented above. The tart bite was perhaps more than I would generally wish to have from my beer, but it was manageable and I was able to make out the character of the fairly tasty beer that was lurking behind the waves of pucker-inducing sourness. Served cold, this was very refreshing, and I’m confident that I only made about 15 embarrassing faces while drinking it.

The Verdict: I’m not big on sour tastes in general. Sour beer is not for me. This is high quality stuff, and it satisfies without any sort of unpleasant lingering flavours, but I can’t say that I would pick it up again. If sour is your thing, though, hit this up. There seriously is a very nice beer in there underneath the snappy sourness.

I Came. I Saw’d. I Conquered.

This brings our Sawdust City Brewery special mini-series to a close! I hope that you’ve enjoyed reading about me getting a little tipsy as much as I enjoyed getting a little tipsy. If ever you find yourself in Gravenhurst, I must reiterate that it is a very good idea to stop in at the brewery and pick up some special treats!

They also sell very amazing butter tarts, and beyond stellar burgers at the food truck outside. I suppose this goes to show that there’s more to life than beer, although I do not wish to talk about those other things very often.

Beer!