Beer – #250 – Moa – Ten Year Beer

Bit Excited to have a 2012 vintage Moa Ten Year Beer. Brewed by Moa Brewing Company In the style of a Sour/Wild Ale and they do that of course in Blenheim, New Zealand

Moa Ten Year Beer is a cherry lambic made in a uniquely traditional Belgium style. It is fermented as a tripel then poured into French oak puncheons with Marlborough cherries stuffed in the barrel. Wild yeast is added and it is left to slowly ferment and age over 10 months. The end product pours strawberry golden and has powerful aromas of cherries and dried herbs. The oak and cherries integrate over time and the base characters of banana and butterscotch are evident at the end of the palate. Moa Ten Year Beer is not as sour as traditional lambics and this complex style benefits from ten years of cellar aging.

750ml of a 10%% ABV beer, which is something like 6.2 standard drink units. Could also be 315 calories.

Presented in a Cork and Cage style, as is normal from Moa. But without the fancy foil that may have been on previous vintages.

So I’ve got to 250 with something a bit special, which means I still have my Epic Coffee and Fig Stout to have at a later date, and I am really looking forward to that.

Lovely Sour cheery aroma when the cork gently pops, goodly amount of carbonation, Pours golden yellow brown, almost cloudy, which MrsPdubyah says is “pretty”, and she has no interest in beer at all!, but without a head, but fizzes away to itself in the glass. Aroma is dusky sour.

Sour in an odd way. Not a balanced sour but seems to be something chemical and unreal about it. Not sure what they’ve added to make this sweeter, but they could have used more.

I’ve had much more sour beers than this and they are fully in play with that. This is a good effort but it isn’t a great effort. I will say that it’s an incredibly ballsy effort and going out on a limb is always worth more kudos.

Having said that it’s not great the end to end experience is pretty interesting. The colour and the aroma on the nose, the duskiness, and the wash of sourness as a underlying taste. However there isn’t much tartness from the cherries, or much of chary at all in this, and then there isn’t much carry, it’s all pretty much front notes.

The pdubyah-o-meter, of course, random and arbitrary, a 7 , this is good but just that. It’s a very approachable beer for a sour, and would stand a fairly robust food match, but it gets to be a bit tedious and that makes it a celebration or situation beer, and not for sharing or for sitting for a session with.

Lambics are wheat beers made with stale hops and fermented with wild yeasts and other microorganisms, traditionally only on the Senne Valley in and around Brussels. The most traditional of the fruit lambics are kriek (cherry) and framboise (raspberry). In modern times, peaches (peche), blackcurrants (cassis), grapes, as well as more exotic fruits are used. Traditional lambics are commonly denoted by the term “oud”, which is a reference to “old-style”, and these are the most sour. More commonly, though, lambics are sweetened to cut the intense acidity. Serve with sharp cheeses or pickled dishes, or use in the preparation of mussels.