For the benefit of our members who have yet to fully embrace the joys of sour beers, here is your customary sour beer alert!
For those who delight in the eye-squinting and mouth-puckering nature of sours, you’ll be containing excited anticipation. Undressed Foederbier is a rustic old style brown ale. Brewed as a normal beer, it picks up the sourness from the time spent in the foeder (a very large 600 litre oak barrel previously used to aged wine).
This beer is ‘undressed’ in the sense it is taken straight form the foeder and put into package. There is no blending or adding of any other ingredients. The beer pours really quite still, and whatever head you can agitate from your pour settles quickly.
Slightly sweet on the nose with the tell-tale lactic acidity and wooden barrel notes. This follows through in the taste, where early red fruits and sweet malts give way to a solid sour acidity. Black currants, plums, cherries, wood, vinegar, chocolate and a little spice make for a strong combination of flavours. Very little hop bitterness but a lingering tart finish that just itches your gums a little; encouraging the next sip.
Cuvee Freddy is Alvinne's take on a Belgian Our Bruin, the Framboos has 20kg fresh raspberries added per 100 litres of beer, than aged in red wine barrels for several months
An intriguing dark ale, brewed with spices (ginger, coriander & cardamom)
A Berliner Weisse with 20% rye and 30% wheat malt, aged in oak for 8 months before the addition of raspberries for a further 4 months
A refreshing Grisette style beer, a collaborative brew with Cervesa Guineu from Spain
A big Belgian Quad aged in red wine barrels, then transferred to Sauternes white wine barrels for a further year
Cuvee D'Erpigny is back in 2016 with the Pays D'Erpigny aged in French Sauternes barrels
Cuvee Freddy is Alvinne's take on a Belgian Our Bruin, the Framboos has 20kg fresh raspberries added per 100 litres of beer, than aged in red wine barrels for several months
An interesting beer from Alvinne, and one of Belgium's most bitter beers at 115 IBU
A Berliner Weisse brewed with 20% rye and 30% wheat
A second version of this beer, with a dominant display from the Morpheus yeast supported by Cascade and Chinook hops
A big Imperial Stout, dark fruit, chocolate and a hint of sourness
A Farmhouse Tripel is one of the new offerings from Alvinne, but it isn't exactly traditional
Alvinne's saison is light, crisp, quite funky with a hint of sour thanks to blending a little of the Omega blond sour beer
A little sweet, a little sour, lots of body and complexity
A blonde Sour/American Wild Ale - a great balance of bitter, sweet and sour
A cross between a barley wine and an ABT, with the added complexity of Alvinne's Morpheus yeast
This amber sour is one of the base beers Alvinne use to create many of their barrel-aged creations
A dark sour beer of 10.0%. Part of the renowned Alvinne Morpheus Sour Collection
A rich and boozy quadrupel, featuring Alvinne's Morpheus house yeast