The Pome of Dan: Pear 21 by New Glarus Brewing

The humble pear doesn't get the attention that its cousin the apple does. What do people know about them beyond that partridges in their trees make nice Christmas gifts? It wasn't a pear that Eve ate which led to the downfall of Man, it was an apple. (Well, hypothetically.) And when the pear does come up for consideration, it gets thrown into phrases denoting negative things such as "go pear shaped". Poor fruit. Less infamously, note that Anheuser-Busch didn't decide to make Busch Light Pear, they went with Busch Light Apple.

"If the mega-breweries won't make pear beer, we will!" cried Dan Carey to the lead brewer above the din of the Spotted Cow bottling line, and the assistant brewers darted forward to the brew kettle.

And so they did. Pear 21 came out in August.

From my admittedly very limited view of the Wisconsin beer scene, Pear 21 seems to have been a flop. I did not see much attention given to it unlike its fruity predecessor, Lots o' Peach 21. I found that beer to be cloyingly sweet and had high hopes that Pear 21 wouldn't be a fructosian punch to the pancreas when I bought a 4-pack of it.

New Glarus is being a bit cagey about the exact nature of Pear 21. Their website merely says that it tastes like pear and offers the noncommittal "Inspired by Berliner Weisse styles of brewing". It's not that New Glarus needs to brew according to strict style guidelines or within the bounds prescribed by tradition, it's that I'd like to have more of an idea of what the beer is like beyond the fruit in the name. Oh well.

Seeing Berliner Weisse mentioned in the description, I sought out a fancy glass. Alas, I found neither a champagne flute nor a stemmed wine glass in the kitchen so it was the unstemmed wine glass for me. My pour produced a small, loose, white head that went away quickly. The beer was a light gold and a little hazy. There was a modicum of bubbles visible inside. Presumably it was not inspired by the traditional level of carbonation of the Berliner Weisse as it did not have the ebullient fizz of even New Glarus' own takes on the style.

The aroma was absolutely wonderful – it was indeed lots o' pear. The only other scent I caught was a hint of citrus.

Don't be overly sweet! Don't Be Overly Sweet! DON'T BE OVERLY SWEET!

I took a sip and found that it tasted a lot like it smelled: positively pomaceous! But it was very sweet. The beer didn't feel particularly treacly on my tongue yet it tasted rather syrupy. All of the tartness that I had expected from the Berliner Weisse reference on the label was buried underneath the sweetness just like the bass on …And Justice For All. You could discern it but only if you swished the beer around in your mouth and really, really concentrated. As with the aroma, there was a faint citrus flavor in the background. On the finish the fruity sweetness lost some of its power and its retreat meant that a tad of sourness was able to peek through.

Like its peach predecessor, this stuff tasted like a Libby nectar to me. It was just too sweet, too syrupy. On the plus side, the pear flavor was simply delicious. It genuinely tasted like fresh pear. I am curious to know how this beer became so sweet. Was it really that full of malty sugars? Was sweetened pear juice added? Either it needs to have the sweetness lessened greatly or the fizz and tartness boosted by orders of magnitude.

What do you do with such a cloying beer? Maybe cut it with some club soda? I can definitely see braising pork with it.

Junk food pairing: Pair your Pear 21 with something to cut through the sweetness like salt & vinegar pork rinds.