Herevana – Hallertau – Primal Descent
It’s a Friday and it’s time for the Primal Descent. From Hallertau. I’m not a fan of sour beer in general although I drink more than my share of them. Hallertau though seem to hit the mark more than not, and I’m all good with that.
Hallertau Brewbar & Restaurant make the Hallertau Primal Descent just over the way in Riverhead, Auckland, 🇳🇿 New Zealand. It is a Sour / Wild Beer with an ABV of 5.8% making this bottle of 500ml labour 2.3 standard drinks.
This is a beer that you ‘could’ cellar for upto 10 years, or a few weeks in my fridge.
The aroma when you pop the top is a genuinely pleasing and enjoyable sour note. It is very cider like.
The aroma in the glass is the same, a lovely cider like sour sweetness in a pour of a golden yellow beer that had the brightest stark white head for a fleeting moment. I can’t complain about the aroma or looks.
I shuddered at the sourness, a proper puckering up and squinting sup of beer. A cascade of sourness that clambers over the palette, exits with a sly kick and leaves a sugary sweetness on the lips that has you licking in delight. What a ride!
The second sip was equally as sour and with similar effect. It is very addictive and compelling.
This is the proper kind of sour/spontaneous beer that I seek out, for me this is authentic and as it should be and not laboured or forced.
Everytime a shudder, it’s that sour and it really is worth it. Divine.
The Pdubyah-o-meter rates this as a 10 on the arbitrary number scale. This is an outrageous assault of taste, sourness, sweetness, bitterness, and is a pure delight to drink. I can’t think how this could be better, unless it would in a few years someone shares one with me and that sugary body has become fuller and richer and more syrupy. But right her right now this is Divine.
Music: Le Volume Courbe is a band by French-born, London-based singer/songwriter/producer, Charlotte Marionneau/Charlotte Courbe – This is the Album ” I Wish Dee Dee Ramone Was Here With Me’
Herevana beers are those I drink at home, I’m not at some beer festival, like, for instance, Beervana, but am just in my kitchen, usually, dining room table, sometimes, or outside, occasionally, where I can take an average picture and write in real time about the beer that I’ve invested in, both in a monetary and emotional way.
Philip himself.
Aromas of fresh silage and almost dried up creek bed. Pungent lemons and decomposing apricot stones lingering in the finish.
Brewers Notes
Sour / Wild Beer
The “Wild Beer” and the “Sour Beer” are catch-all styles for any golden to amber colored beer where the implementation of a microorganism other than traditional brewer’s yeasts ensures a drier, thinner, sour and/or funkier product. Such microorganisms includes Lactobacillus, Pediococcus, Saccharomyces and Brettanomyces. Younger versions are brighter and fruitier, while older ones possess more depth of funk and may lose more of the base style character. The base beer style becomes less relevant because the various yeast and bacteria tend to dominate the profile. They are non-traditional beer interpretations or experimentations inspired by Belgian classic sour / wild ales. The “Traditional Wild / Sour Beers” are often the result of a Mixed-Fermentation Blend of beers aged in barrels and tend to have a complex funky taste acquired from the microbial flora. Wood or barrel aging is very common in this type of beers, but not required. The “Kettle Sour Beers” or “Quick Soured Beers” are generally soured using a Kettle Souring technique in a stainless steel mash tun and have a tartness taste similar of an unsweetened yogurt.
A life just as ordinary 