Beer – #308 – Townshend – Ned’s Head Flaunders Red

Townshend – Ned’s Head Flaunders Red…. Get on the bandwagon. It might be clearer next beer.

Brewed by Townshend Brewery This is styled as a Sour Red/Brown ad they do this trick in Upper Moutere, New Zealand

A Special Release, this sour wee drop will pop your top and leave your mouth dancing. But don’t be fooled into thinking this is a shock value beer, it’s full body and malty base stops you from completely loosing your head, and is in fact a highly pleasurable experience! It’s loosely based on a Flanders Red style beer from Belgium, or there abouts! It’s a tangy, slightly wild red ale brewed in the Flemish tradition.

So a Sunday 500ml bottle, 6-5% ABV, which would be 2.4 standard drinks, and at 195 calories a serve.

Sour beer.

Squirty beer as this gushed all over the place on opening including me and the keyboard. Not a good start.

So Aroma on opening – fizzy foam up the nose. A shocker.

So highly carbonated and that early release doesn’t appear to have dampened it down as it pours with a fluffy off brown aerated head. The aroma is ‘sour’.

Colour is murky brown, muddy and cloudy. Because sediment. Because light orange on dark orange in mini font makes that clear.

No points for the label. Call me old may eyes as you will.

This isn’t my first sour beer experience, but this isn’t like the others I had. The sourness is a thing, and probably very clever, but there isn’t anything to support this or carry it as a thing across the palate. For that then I think that this is a bit thin and ultimately not that enjoyable.

The pdubyah-o-meter says 6, but leaning more towards above average than just average. I wish there was something fuller in the taste of this, a warmer underneath something to fill it out, and although this is 6.5% beer it’s not that apparent in drinking it.

SOUR ALE/WILD ALE

Sour ale is a broad spectrum of wild ales, from the fruity and acetic Flanders Red Ales and Oud Bruins, to the experimental ales gaining popularity in the United States which use lactobacillus, brettanomyces and pediococcus in new and wild ways.