Where to begin with talking about this beer? It’s a juxtaposition of new and old, rustic and schmick, clean and funky.
Slipstream haves put out fantastic beers from day one. They’ve been releasing barrel-aged beers for years. But this is the first time they’ve released anything like this. Just in time for Christmas 2024, Slipstream released their first Gold Wild Ale. Brand spanking new.
But parts of this beer are not new at all. For a start, it was brewed almost two years ago, spent 18 months in wine barrels (both white and red), then hit the snooze button for a few more months as it further conditioned in the bottle. But Gold’s origin story goes back further than this. A decade ago, long before he was head brewer at Slipstream, Gavin Croft sloshed together the dregs of various world-famous beers into one vessel to bring together some of his favourite yeasts and bacteria, then nurtured this unlikely King’s Cup so the various bugs within would multiply. And it’s this mother culture, which Gav’s been using throughout the years to create funky beers in other contexts, that is the beating heart of Gold Wild Ale.
As a result, there’s something very rustic about this beer. Just because Gav’s been nurturing this culture for longer than he’s been father to his own kids doesn’t mean he knows exactly what’s in there. Just as with children, you can see how a culture like this behaves, but it’s not always clear what’s going on inside. Gav can tell you there’s likely Brettanomyces, lactobacillus, pediococcus and Saccharomyces in there, but without studying it in a lab he couldn’t tell you exactly which yeast strains or species of bacteria are thriving and which are limping along. And he didn’t (and couldn’t) control exactly what they did in the darkness of their oak bedrooms for 18 months. This beer is the product of its critters – whoever they are.
How to package such a beer? In a beautiful champagne-style bottle, with a shiny gold label and a beautiful sparkling golden wax seal. Schmick.
The beer itself brings together clean and funky in an interesting way. Its production foreshadowed this: the base beer was brewed as a lager, with impeccable sanitation and a clean ferment… before being bombarded with the safari of wild beasties as it went into barrel.
So what’s it like to drink? The first whiff had me expecting mostly Brett flavours – plenty of barnyard funk and crisp pear – but upon sipping there’s a whole lot more going on. A bracing bite-into-a-lemon acidity that holds up just short of being puckering; a candied lemon sweetness that provides a friendly balance; a lemon peel and pith bitterness that draws out like the resonant strum of a double bass. A white wineyness* that brings its own refreshing fruity notes. A lovely fluffy carbonation that gives the entire experience a bit of a champagne vibe.
New and old. Rustic and schmick. Clean and funky. A beer to celebrate, and a beer to celebrate with.
Mick Wüst
* I always feel like an idiot when there's a white wineyness to a beer, since I don't know wine well enough to describe it much better than that. Will white wineyness do?
Published January 2, 2025 2025-01-02 00:00:00