Let Me Bring You Tips From the Wood: Want a Fresh Cut? by 1840 Brewing Company

 

Most of my last few beer reviews have been of beers by newer breweries from Milwaukee. This holds true for today's post despite the name 1840 Brewing Company which appears to have sold its first beers in 2017. The "1840" part comes from the year that Milwaukee's first commercial brewery opened. That was the Milwaukee Brewery sometimes called "Owens' Brewery" after Richard Owens, one of the three founders.

1840 bills itself as an "urban farmhouse brewery" and I am not sure what that means. Perhaps my Googling skills have gone soft. When I try to get a definition of this, I just get articles from Milwaukee outlets that note it is an urban farmhouse brewery as if the definition was self-evident and would mean something to the vast majority of humanity. Oh well.

My understanding is that 1840's brews have only recently begun appearing in Madison. I found them recently and decided to give one a try after seeing that they had a Berliner Weisse on offer in which spruce tips were involved. The beers come in these neat brown half liter bottles with some vaguely old-timey labels making them look like Samuel Taylor Coleridge's laudanum vials.

The spruce made me think of the spruce Goses I'd had. Bayerischer Bahnhof, one of the few German breweries that makes Gose, had a spruce variant and some of it ended up Madison. I had a pour at the Hop Cat which used to be downtown. And then there was a spruce Gose by Freigeist Bierkultur. I rather enjoyed both of these biers so I was looking forward to a Berliner Weisse imbued with some coniferous goodness.

When I was putting the bottle into the refrigerator, I read the rest of the label and saw that it was dry hopped with NZ Kohatu® hops that impart tropical fruit flavors.

D'oh!

I felt like Homer Simpson in the flying pig episode, "It's just a little fruity. It's still good, it's still good!"

Caveat emptor.

Despite not - how shall I say it? – being a proponent of trendy hops that taste like tropical fruit, I plowed on.

Want a Fresh Cut? poured a lovely hazy yellow with a nice, loose white head that didn't stick around too long. It had the requisite lemon/citrus smell of a Berliner Weisse along with pine and tropical fruit. The latter reminded me of mango. Or was it passion fruit?

I tasted that lemon in the assertive sourness. Carbonation seemed a little on the low side for a style with the moniker "Champagne of the north" but it was by no means flat. There was still plenty of fizz to tickle the tongue and add some dryness to complement the tang. The piney taste remained in the background, behind all the sour and made a nice counter flavor.

And then came the hops.

The fruit flavor was, um, assertive, and almost makes you forget you are drinking a Berliner Weisse, for a split second. And the piney taste was laid low by mango. In addition to tropical fruit, Kohatu® hops are also supposed to taste like pine needles. To my taste, fruit overwhelmed any pine taste and, honestly, I assumed the sharp, resiny taste came from the spruce tips but, never having tasted these hops previously, some of that could have come from the Kohatu®.

The mango/tropical fruit taste lasted into the finish as did a hint of pine that lingered well after the beer was down the hatch.

Want a Fresh Cut? is just not my thing. I think there was a tasty kettle soured Berliner Weisse in that bottle but it was overrun by tropical fruit hops. It had just the perfect level of sourness for my taste and was optimally carbonated for me as well. And I very much enjoyed the pine flavor. It was fairly mellow but was still worked well against the lemony bite. But the tropical fruit was too much. Not only that, I also don't particularly care for strong fruit flavors from hops. I've had mango syrup in a Berliner Weisse and it was fine. I've also had many a Berliner Weisse aged on fruit and they were very tasty. So why would I object here?

I think the answer is partly how my tongue works and partly psychology. I am not inclined to drinking Berliner Weisse with mango syrup all day long. One is fine. But the sugar adds body and the sweetness plays off of the sour in a way that seems naturally pleasing. They are good sparring partners. Yeah, the mango flavor isn't real but the drinker knows it's artifice and it works for a glass.

Schell has a whole program devoted to Berliner Weisse and they usually age the beers on fruit. Real fruit. So you get the sugars. In addition, the fruit flavor is real. Adding that flavor via hops violates what former UW professor Noël Carroll might call a category violation. You're tasting fruit with no fruit in sight. My primitive ape brain is programmed to look askance at such things.

I think I'd have liked Want a Fresh Cut? if the fruitiness were still there but much less prominent. Let the spruce and the sour do their pas de deux and the hop-spawned tropical fruit can be an accent. However, if fruity tasting hops are your thing, Want a Fresh Cut? may just be right up your Strasse.

Junk food pairing: Pair your Want a Fresh Cut? with the tropical goodness of Jay's Krunchers® Sweet Hawaiian Style Onion Kettle Chips.