Sometimes you know you’re going to love a beer the moment you see it. Jus Rouge is such a beer, with the blend of saisons and blackcurrants from Sobremesa Fermentary & Blendery pouring with such a vibrant, crimson colour that it makes you wonder why all other shades of red look so toned down.
Hold it up to the light and there are touches of pink and purple while that beautiful hue feels a little unsurprising when you see the beer was aged on 285 grams of blackcurrants per litre for ten weeks. Before that, two-year-old mixed culture saison and younger open-fermented saison were brought together. As the juice box on the label and the name (which is French for red juice) suggest, what we have here is an incredibly complex juice that’s tannic and has a substantial funk of Brett running through it. There are further fruit notes of cranberries alongside the blackcurrant and the beer manages to seem rich, acidic and dry all at once. As that wonderful coloured liquid disappears, my mind races back to childhood memories of licking my hands clean after ingesting as many berries as I could get my hands on.
There’s further fresh funk from Sobremesa too, with Gogol a hoppy Brett ale that was inspired by the fermenter’s favourite Belgian examples of lively saisons. Those hops are Challenger and Saaz and mixed with the yeast, they deliver a whole lot of fruit notes. Largely, they’re of a tropical bent with rockmelon and pineapple leading the charge and tinned peaches coming through too. With quite a fulsome, textural mouthfeel and building bitterness, it’s a beer born to be enjoyed in the sun.
Will Ziebell
Published December 13, 2024 2024-12-13 00:00:00
