What is the next smallest prefix after pico? That may be an accurate description of the trend that is pickle beers.
I tried one from Noon Whistle last autumn, which I rather liked, and have seen one from Destihl on shelves here in Madison, although I now see 2 versions on their webpage - the regular and the spicy. What is it with Illinois breweries and pickle beers? If I recall correctly, there were a few at the Great Taste of the Midwest last year but I didn't sample any such brews. I merely recall hearing tell of them on that den of iniquity that is Twitter.
On a recent venture out to Brennan's in search of new/fresh beer from Jack's Abby and anything by Dovetail that is not brewed year-round, I stumbled across Donna's Pickle Beer. (As near as I can tell, Jack's Abby has left the state and Dovetail only delivers non-annuals to select joints around town.) I believe that it is now easier to find a pickle beer in this town than it is a smoked beer. Surely this is one of the seven seals and it is now broken.
Donna's Pickle Beer is brewed by Pilot Project Brewing, a brewery that, I presume, provides space for others to come on in and brew. It apparently originated in Chicago but now also has an incubator in Milwaukee. Donna's is the brainchild of Scott Baird and Joshua Jancewicz and is named after Jancewicz's mother. Donna the beer is made with the "original brine recipe" of Donna the woman.
While there is definitely a high gimmickry factor at play here, Donna's stands out because it's an American lager and not a sour ale like the other pickle beers I've seen and tasted. In addition, dill pickles don't taste like tropical fruit so it gets points from me for that.
Why yes, I did garnish my pickle beer with a pickle. But I also did some tasting without a spear of flavor intensity. I wish I'd had slices so I could have perched them atop the rim. And, now that I think about it, I should have put a toothpick through the spear and rested it so that some of the pickle was visible above the head. Well, I guess I didn't want to block the garden gnome's face too much.
My pour produced a lovely, loose head of white foam that went away quickly. Reminded me of soda. The beer of pickle was exactly what you'd expect from an "American lager" which I now take to mean a Bud/Miller/Coors clone-like thingy: clear, yellow, and fizzy. You know what it smells like when you put your nose above a jar of pickles and take a sniff? This stuff smelled like that. I don't think that having the pickle spear in there changed the aroma very much. It made it bolder but not really different qualitatively.
The beer had a light body and - quelle surprise! - tasted like pickle brine. Enough saltiness to enhance the flavor but not enough to make it salty like a Dead Sea(TM) Gose. I couldn't discern the grain but I suspect it made the beer a bit fuller tasting than it would have been otherwise. I also couldn't taste anything really tangy. They didn't try to compensate for the vinegar's absence and left something just savory. The finish too was pickle briny. Maybe a trace of the Noble hops that the ad copy says are in there but just a trace of something spicy.
As with the aroma, having a pickle in the beer seemed merely to enhance what was already there and not change the flavor to something different. The unadulterated version of this stuff was light with a moderate dill pickle brine taste. It wasn't faint but it also wasn't like drinking out of a pickle jar either. Adding a spear just make it more briney, more pungent.
I thoroughly enjoyed Donna's Pickle Beer. Being mostly of German and Slavic stock, I am all over dill pickles. Without garnish, this beer is light and refreshing with enough pickle taste to let you know that it's there but not so much that you think you've been involved in an accident at the Vlasic factory.
Junk food pairing: Grab a six-pack of Donna's Pickle Beer and then a bag of Old Dutch Spicy Dill Pickle potato chips to drown in dilly gluttony.
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