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Sunday, August 09, 2009

A Dissident from the Larder

After dinner at a friend's house last night, I found myself enjoying a Dissidents he brought up from the basement. I had a bottle of this not long ago from my own larder, and it was extremely sour--lambic sour, brettanomyces- ate- all-the-sugars- and-part-of-the-bottle sour. Much of the other elements of the beer found themselves shouldered aside by an austere, Sahara dryness.

So imagine my surprise when his bottle produced an entirely different Dissident. The malt and cherry had not been annihilated, but interestingly, had conspired to produce a cinnamony gingerbread quality. The sour wasn't aggressive or even insistent, and it definitely played side man to the sweeter, maltier element.

Fascinating. Wild yeasts are unpredictable, aren't they?

5 comments:

  1. Any indication on if there's going to be a Dissident 09?

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  2. The next batch of Dissident should be out sometime in late 2010

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  3. I still have yet to try a bottle (or tap) which was any more than mildly sour, though I haven't had any with a "cinnamony gingerbread quality" either.

    For being a wild yeast beer, my experience thus far (close to a half-dozen bottles by now - one as recently as a couple months ago - as well as on tap anywhere I find it) has been pretty consistent… not that that's a bad thing! I still love it, and my stomach is thankful that it's not so sour.

    -anónimo

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  4. And it was, as you fail to explicitly mention, outstanding. Too bad it was my last...

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  5. So now, decision time.

    I just found my own basement bottle of Dissident, apparently the last bottle I'm going to own for another year.

    Should I give 'er a shot or hang onto it for a special occasion, as I had been doing?

    I'm very, very curious about its flavor. Loved both bottles I downed last year (including one that worked great with Thanksgiving dinner with the family).

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