Before we get stuck into this orgiastic celebration of some of the most unique sour beers known to humanity, can we please have a moment of silence in solidarity for the One Drop staff tasked with cleaning and maintaining the brewing and packaging equipment? I’ve experienced plenty of One Drop craziness in my time writing about beers, but this series of cream smoothie sours are truly striking…and viscous.
Pouring and drinking a can of Get Up is almost a feat of resistance against human behavioural evolution. Ordinarily, if you were to see a liquid of this kind of virulent fluoro green, not only would you not be inclined to drink it, you’d probably be right in relocating your entire civilisation as far away from it as possible. Get Up might look like a radioactive incident, but it smells like yoghurt, sweet citrus, biscuit and coconut. There’s a really interesting mouthfeel here where it starts out thick and luscious but quickly dissolves into a more familiar territory. On the palate is green lollies, vanilla, sweet lime cheesecake, coconut cream and a mild tartness as a brief reminder that, yes, this is actually a beer.
Although not as alarming as Get Up, Bomb is a shade of bluey-green that seems unnatural but is actually achieved though the use of blue spirulina, a naturally-occurring pigment extracted from blue-green algae. And I don’t know about you but when I see blue, my thoughts aren’t usually drawn to banana and pineapple. This kind of mental dissonance between appearance and experience is undeniably very cool. The use of fruit with heaps of coconut cream form the overall impression of a pretty bloody delicious piña colada. Again the acidity is very restrained but the lack of overt sweetness balances this out nicely. The low carbonation helps provide a consistent, creamy mouthfeel that doesn’t finish cloying or slick. A triumph.
What a world to live in when a bright magenta beer sort of plops into your glass like it’s just oozing out of the blender at Boost Juice and it barely even raises an eyebrow. Our next entry here is Throw, an amalgam of raspberry, strawberry and vanilla ice cream in the guise of a sour beer. The aroma is intense raspberry blended with the kind of lacto-yoghurt tang you’d absolutely expect to find in a fruit smoothie. Exactly like it says on the tin, it’s thick, and tastes like a foray into the pink section of a lolly pick ’n' mix. Ripe raspberries and strawberries & cream and pink sherbert meld with a more robust, juicy sourness that finishes clean and moreish.
Lets round out this foursome with Welcome To The Party, like the others it’s labelled a cream smoothie sour, it’s laden with tropical fruit galore, birthday cake mix, and once again rounded out with coconut cream. Of the four, Welcome To The Party is the most successful at maintaining a homogeneous cake batter like consistency. The nose is a combination of mango lassi and straight up breakfast juice. The combination of mango, guava and passionfruit is a great combination that ends up more than the sum of its parts. First impression on tasting is a blend of frozen mango daiquiri and coconut cream. The underlying vanilla spongecake vibe comes through as it warms slightly in what is a staggeringly well-balanced beer. To take something that has several over the top elements and make it work seamlessly is an impressive achievement. It’s also just a lot of fun.
Judd Owen
Published August 6, 2024 2024-08-06 00:00:00
