Herevana – 8 Wired and Rocky Ridge – Pflaume

A collaboration beer, and what might a bit divisive, online comments such as “bacon” “Salmon” “undrinkable” and “despite” if you look. I mean what could possibly go wrong?, Plum Smoked Sour Beer, of course it is.

It was part of a case of 12 collaboration beers put together by the lovely people at @beerjerkNz , I was looking for a suitable gap to have this, Sunday seems like a nice day for a new beer in an unusual style. By unusual I mean ‘never made’ unless as some kind of challenge, certainly not a core beer.

8 Wired  in Collaboration with Rocky Ridge Brewing Co. make the Pflaume, which is labelled as an Historical Beer – Lichtenhainer style. The ABV is 4.5%

Notorious for not really reading the small print, ingredients or notes beforehand I know that this is a pink coloured beer, I wish I’d not read that and been surprised on opening. But I’m sure there are other surprises.

The aroma on opening the can is of a smokey beer, it is quite sharp. It I also very pink with an enthusiastic pillowy soft airy head, the smokey aroma follows to the glass.

Well there are many things going on, many to many things. I get Sourness, Dryness, Smokiness, I don’t get much plum.

A complex, or you might say over complicated beers, where I now find myself a bit torn about what I just experienced. It isn’t undrinkable, it is a challenge and unusual beer where I’m still trying to find a balance about the right words in the right order to use to describe it.

I think that this might be an unnecessarily complicated beer that appears to be a compromise more than a collaboration, a friendly compromise, mostly because I can’t think of a similar 8 Wired beer, so I think that this would have been a challenge for them.

I would have brought this based on my like of the unusual and rare beer styles had I not brought it as a case.

The Pdubyah-o-meter rates this as 7 on the arbitrary number scale. It’s a bit complicated and a bit too unusual to be anything other than a novelty really, it will have fans and it will have detractors, all part of the fun I guess. Not the worst beer I’ve ever had, but it will get an honourable mention in the category ‘difficult’.

Music: On Original Vinyl – Graham Parker and the rumour, a double album.

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.

The Trans Tasman Collaborational is an initiative from Beer Jerk (NZ) and Carwyn Cellars (AUS) that has seen us team up with the legendary Australian brewery Rocky Ridge. After the usual long winded email chain with some wild ideas being thrown around we landed with a Plum Lichtenhainer. A slightly smoky, slightly sour ale that is jam packed full of fruit character. Low bitterness with a complex flavour profile, the subtle balance between smoke and sour makes this a deliciously drinkable beer with plenty of finesse and swagger.

A Trans Tasman Collab with Rocky Ridge Brewing, Busselton WA. We got together and decided to brew a historic style – Lichtenhainer. This smoked sour is a flavour bomb brewed with a huge backbone of manuka smoked malts and packed with plums which gives the beer a gloriously purple hue

Brewers Notes

Grodziskie / Grätzer / Lichtenhainer

The Grodziskie (pronounced “Grow-Jees-kee-uh”) in polish, or Grätzer (pronounced “Grate-sir”) in german, is a low-gravity, highly-carbonated, highly sessionable light-bodied ale combining an oak-smoked wheat malt flavor with a clean hop bitterness. It has a smoked character but less intense than in a Rauchbier. Pale yellow to medium gold in color with excellent clarity, it as similar in strength to a Berliner Weisse, but almost never sour. On the other hand, the Lichtenhainer is a sour, smoked, lower-gravity German wheat beer with a complex yet refreshing character due to high attenuation and carbonation, along with low bitterness and moderate sourness. Not as acidic as Berliner weisse, probably more like a smoked Gose without coriander and salt, or a Grodziskie with Gose-like acidity.