Beer of the Week! 02/22/22

Ballad Thai Sour

Regularly $13.99 / Now on Sale for $12.96
Kettle Sour with Thai Inspired Spices

Here at Market St. Wine, we take our sours very seriously. There are a bunch out there, and we want to make sure that if we bring one in, it’s worth it. Also many sour beers available these days are kettle sours, and we freely admit a preference for other types of sours. Let us explain …

A kettle sour is a beer that is soured in a stainless steel kettle. After brewers boil the malt and before hopping and fermentation, they cool the boiled malt and infect it with Lactobacillus bacteria. The bacteria eats the malt sugar and metabolizes it into lactic acid — the same tart ingredient that you find in sour milk or unsweetened yogurt. Craft brewers will then, more times than not, add something (frequently fruit) to either counter or compliment the Lacto tartness. For example, this souring process gives us many American Gose style ales.

Kettle souring is quicker and easier than, say, the Belgian style mixed fermentation sours, where malt is initially fermented with sour-producing Brettanomyces yeasts and then aged (for weeks to years!) in oak barrels infected with Lactobacillus. This latter process (and other souring processes) can produce nuanced and complex sour flavors, but they are both labor and time intensive. Kettle souring takes only days and produces a more focused tartness (or a more “one note” tartness if you’re persnickety … like we are).

Happily, Danville’s Ballad Brewing Company has done something really special with their Thai Sour. After kettle souring, they’ve added lemongrass, Holy basil, galangal, and Thai Birds eye chili. And where there was little complexity, now there is much.

Blending these spices with a Lacto sour is an inspired pairing. The lemongrass, the Holy basil, and galangal swirl around giving you a Thai-inspired, lime-like, green pepperish herbality, while the Bird’s eye chili gives the smallest zing that slowly builds as you go through the glass. Unfiltered, it’s like the lemongrass and chili and everything else is floating on a river of cream. Lovely.

The Ballad Thai Sour is a surprisingly delicate beer with a lot going on and a lot going for it other than it’s tartness.

Bonus Beer of the Week (‘Cause we cheer, not fear, an extra tipple of beer!)

Old Nation M-43

Regularly $13.99 / Now on Sale for $12.96
New England Style IPA

Old Nation Brewing Company sits in Williamston, MI — a small town outside of Lansing. That’s where Brew Master Travis Fritts settled after learning brewing in Germany. Being from Michigan, he wanted to return to there to share his brewing knowledge. The M-43 is Old Nation’s year-round NEIPA and one of the highest rated beers in Michigan on Beeradvocate. How did they get there?

First, they have a varied malt bill, using Pilsner malt, wheat, and oats producing a smooth, semi-dry base for the hops. They then bitter the malt with Calypso, Amarillo, and Citra hops and dry hop it with Citra, Amarillo, and Simcoe hops.

“The Haze is not from yeast, but rather from an interplay of lipids from the malted oat and oils and acids which naturally occur in the hand-selected Dry hops. This beer is a perfect interplay between top grade malt and hops, MI water, and brewing technique which cannot be faked.” — Old Nation Brewing Company

So many NEIPAS these days pull on more West Coast style hops to produce dry, citrus flavors. You'd think with the Citra, Amarillo, and Simcoe that the M-43 would be one of them. However, the M-43 is a light-bodied, juicy NEIPA that leans all the way over to mango and pineapple in its “juice profile.” In fact, the M-43 is juicy enough for you have it with brunch. Skip the mimosa, just go here. :)

Remember!

You can see our entire beer inventory on Untappd.com!