Tulsa Twister
Brewery: Amager/Prairie Artisan Ales
Type: Farmhouse Ale
Alcohol: 7.5%
Country: Denmark/USA
This is actually the only one of the beers I didn't get to try at Amager's "Amerikaner Dag" release party. I took a bottle of course for review, even though this style has always left me scratching my head at it's popularity. A lot of farmhouse ales rely on yeast and some form of brett to give them any kind of nuance in flavor. For some reason I never quite got the appeal, as most of these beers tend to be really similar. That being said if anyone can make a version I like, it's certainly the team of Amager and the rising stars in of Oklahoma funk, Prairie Artisan Ales.
Prairie is one of the newer breweries on the scene, and like the bottle says they quickly became one of the most talked about breweries in the world. They are especially well known for their farmhouse, saison, and other Belgian leaning type beers. Since they are a pretty small brewery, their brews remain relatively rare, especially outside their area of the US. I was lucky enough to sample some of their beers at CBC and get to see for myself if they live up to the hype. I can say after my first sip of their imperial stout, bomb!, I can say they really know what they are doing. This collaboration ale with Amager will probably be most people in Denmark's introduction to Prairie, so let's see if it stacks up.
According to the bottle the malt bill on this beer is just straight up pilsner. This is quite apparent in the light delicate straw yellow color of the beer. Huge fizzy white head speaks to the high carbonation that is traditional with this style of beer. The head recedes super slow and leaves behind a killer amount of lace work on the walls of the glass. Now here is where I usually run into my problem with saison/farmhouse ales. They all smell nearly identical. Tulsa Twister does have that yeasty, semi spicy farmhouse smell, but there is also a very pleasant hoppiness too it as well. Distinct piney citrus simcoe mixes with the aroma of brett and makes a very nice almost tropical fruit smell that is a refreshing note for this farmhouse ale. Speaking of refreshing, that is exactly what the taste is as well. Light bodied but with a good bite of both carbonation and a little bitterness. The brett and simcoe are dominant in the flavor. Fruity funky brett mixes with saison yeast pepper and unique piney citrus of simcoe to make a really drinkable beer. The hop taste lingers quite a bit along with the bitterness. I guess the thing that had been missing from my enjoyment of farmhouse ales is a huge load of simcoe. I have to say probably one of my favorite farmhouse ales to date. I will wait to see what the real farmhouse buffs have to say, but for me it's a really solid beer that takes me one step closer to buying into the farm.
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