The pickle beer is the picotrend that just won't die. There seems to be two, maybe three, versions that are available more or less year-round with just enough breweries whipping one up periodically to keep Madison shelves fairly well stocked with this oddball style most of the time. If Donna's straight-ahead approach of adding brine to beer just doesn't cut it, you can go with a (likely extremely) sour take on it courtesy of Destihl. Those tartness-loving folks down in Illinois even have a spicy version of their sour pickle beer.
My gut tells me that American craft brewers aren't done with tinkering with the style. I wouldn't be surprised to see a pickle beer that had been aged in vodka barrels at some point. Beyond that, my imagination is strained but, no doubt, some lunatic at a craft brewery somewhere will concoct a pickle beer with Nashville hot chicken or other ingredients I dare not even fathom.
Up until now, my pickle beer purview has been dominated by Illinois breweries making this one the first from Wisconsin to cross my path. Oliphant is up north in the west central part of Wisconsin, perilously close to Minnesota. I have enjoyed the beers that I've tasted by them and appreciated greatly that they brewed a gruit and aren't afraid to smoke things up on occasion. It's just that Oliphant tends to brew a lot of beers that don't appeal to me (or sends those down to Madison) so my bouts of sampling are few and far between. Plus, their labels look a lot like those from The Brewing Projekt, a brewery that, as far as I can tell, took the trendiness of making beer fruity tasting to an extreme where they seem to view malt as a baleful intruder upon their endeavor to make beer indistinguishable from Hawaiian Punch.
To be honest, I probably wouldn't have bought this stuff had I not been gripped by the pickle beer madness. The label described it as a lager with natural flavors which I took to mean a light American lager with, well, flavoring added. Bummer. I'd rather that there be at least some brine in there rather than just Pickle Brine #304 from Amoretti.
Oliphant's Pickel Beer had a really nice white head that effervesced like soda. Sadly, this meant it dissipated fast and my meager photography skills were barely able to capture any. The liquid was quite clear and was a nice light yellow in color. I spied a few bubbles inside. As expected, a pickle brine scent came first and it was followed by lemon candy and some kind of floral dishwashing soap smell.
Its light-medium body was a touch heavier than I expected for a 4% American light lager. A mellow fizziness let some fine malty smoothness through that brought a pickle brine flavor as well as an unexpected burst of sweetness. The briney taste lingered for a bit on the finish before yielding to faint bitterness and a dash of tartness.
This stuff wasn't bad if quaffed very cold and with celerity. Otherwise the pickle brine bit tasted like flavoring and not brine. The malty sweetness threw me off too. It wasn't particularly sweet but its presence was jarring because there just wasn't anything sharp tasting for contrast - too little tartness, not enough salinity, a paucity of fizz.
This just was not my cup of brine.
Junk food pairing: Add more salt and pickle goodness with a bag of Jays Sour n'Dill potato chips to go with the pickle beer from St. Croix County.
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