Drink a Peach: Lots o' Peach by New Glarus Brewing Company

It is an annual ritual for me to take part in the poll New Glarus does to solicit votes for what beers to brew the following year. Without fail, "Dunkel" and "Schwarzbier" are my write-ins and my votes go to Smoke on the Porter, Smoked Rye Ale, and Smoked Rye Bock. Those last two were in the Unplugged series which is now called the Thumbprint series and were simply outstanding beers. Full of smoky goodness with that spicy rye flavor underneath, combined, they mark what just may be the apotheosis of brewmaster Dan Carey’s brewing career.

I love the taste of rye and wish it was used more often in brewing but I can understand why it's not. The stuff soaks up several times its weight in water so you end up with gruel in your brew kettle. But here's a marketing tip for brewers that will make it worth the hassle: brew a rye beer, add some psilocybin, and call it St. Anthony's Fire. It would be a new style - the ergotic pils. "Great taste, less gangrene!"

Unsurprisingly, none of my choices are ever brewed and, looking at the New Glarus site today, I see that the Thumbprint forecast calls for mostly more fruited sours to complement the ones brewed year-round. This is disappointing for me but I just know that they’ll brew my smoked rye beers next year! OK, so they won’t but hope springs eternal, I always say.

It’s not that I dislike fruited sours. Indeed, I have been drinking their Belgian Red, a sour brown ale with cherries, since 1994, the year it debuted. It too is an outstanding beer. And any sour beer that New Glarus brews will stand head and shoulders above the fruited kettle sours that are so prevalent these days because Dan Carey crafts his beers so that they spend a healthy period of time in his Wild Fruit Cave where they soak up the terroir of south central Wisconsin. But, unlike smoked rye beers, I can generally only handle fruited sours in moderation. A goblet here and a tankard there is plenty fine for me, for the most part. 

Seeing bottles of their latest Thumbprint fruited sour, Lots o' Peach 21, for sale individually was nice because it meant that I didn’t have to invest in a 4-pack yet I would get to try it. I try every New Glarus brew that I can get my grubby little hands on because I’ve been drinking New Glarus for 27 years and I know Dan Carey is a great brewmaster. I may not like everything he and his coterie of brewers come up with, but I am always willing to buy the liquid and take the ride.

Lots o' Peach 21 was released quite recently. As I write, it is still early July and so it came out in late June or just within the past several days. I don’t understand the diablerie behind New Glarus’ fruited beers to any great extent, but I gather that it’s all Belgian techniques or Belgian-inspired, at the very least. They make a sour brown ale, add fruit, and let the beer age for a while longer in big oaken vats down in the Wild Fruit Cave. The sorcery gets more complicated when beers of different ages are blended together but I am unsure how many of their sours are prepared this way. The label for Lots o' Peach 21 gives no indication that it is the result of any such fusion, however.

My pour of Lots o' Peach 21 produced very little head – just a smidgeon of the off-white variety – and what there was departed rather quickly. The beer itself was a dark amber color that had a haze to it. If it hadn’t smelled primarily of peaches, I would have been disappointed. Beyond the fruit, I caught a dash of that wild yeast funkiness. This is all to say that it smelled really damn fine!

The first thing I tasted was – quelle surprise! – peach. Like fresh juice dripping down your chin and onto your new white shirt on a sunny day after biting into a peach peach. It was really sweet and this, combined with the beer’s medium body, reminded me of Libby’s Peach Nectar which I drank as a kid. There was a firm sourness to it along with a more moderate helping of that funky, horse blanket taste. Some light fizziness rounded things off. On the finish there was some lingering sour notes, peach (of course), and a flavor akin to grapefruit zest.

There’s a lot to like here even for someone like me that takes these kinds of beers in moderation. For instance, the sour taste was firm but not so strong that it feels like your teeth are melting. Additionally, it had the perfect level of barnyard funk to it. You can’t miss it but it doesn’t dominate all of the other flavors. And then there’s the peach. I mean, only a Philistine wouldn’t like a nice ripe peach. The peach taste here is simply wonderful. But…it’s just too sweet for me. There are more cloying beers out there but this was pretty syrupy stuff.

In short, the sour brown ale bits were perfectly proportioned, but the peach is too nectarous. Hopefully Pear 21, which is set to be released in August, will put things in a more harmonious state.

Junk food pairing: This being a Belgian-style brew, you’ll need a bag of Andy Capp’s Hot Fries to accompany your decent into peach madness.