Porky Pils: Pils Al Pastor by Evil Twin Brewing

Yet another Evil Twin brew. This is, if my count is right, the third brew that they had their hand in that I've in the past month or so. I use the word "they" but honestly don't know if anyone beyond founder Jeppe Jarnit-Bjergsø is actually a part of the company.

While I'm not positive, I do believe that I bought my bomber of Pils Al Pastor back in October around the same time I secured that bottle of Bela. I was perusing the beer at Jenifer Street Market and noticed several single bottles of interest. Most of them were pilsners, curiously enough.

I finally got around to sampling it earlier this week so the bier suffered because of my unfortunate tendency to buy too many beers and not getting around to drinking them in a timely manner. Some brews have certainly suffered at my hands and I've been up front about that. Others have handled the indignity well. Indeed, some are just fine after their extended stays in my cellar. Thankfully my backlog of brews is down to about a week's worth of reviews. After that it'll be some dips into my Limited Exclusive Cellar Reserve™ series as well as some newer brews. So you two people who read these things will have some fresh and novel stuff to deal with.

And so back to the brew at hand, Pils Al Pastor. Evil Twin has this to say about it:

Spicy, sweet and sour – this beer was inspired by a rad barman's ancho chili, pineapple and lime accented cocktail pairing for the iconic pork and pineapple taco served across the street. A provocative pilsner; feel free to drop a dime (vintage phone booth style) on it. A little good-natured defiance of the bar’s cheeky name is part of the plan for this roguish collaboration.

Because I'm at that age, I have no idea what "feel free to drop a dime (vintage phone booth style) on it" means.

Anyway, Pils Al Pastor comes in a 22oz bottle and I guess one would consider it to be an imperial pilsner as it comes in at 8% A.B.V. In addition it is flavored with pineapple, lime, and ancho chili.

It pours a lovely light gold color and appeared to have just the slightest bit of haziness. Curiously enough, my pour produced only the most minimal white head which was gone in a New York minute. I have to wonder if whatever was used to add the pineapple, lime, and chili flavors, which I presume were real pineapple, lime, and ancho chilis, degraded the foaming action here. On the other hand, there were more bubbles than even Raymond Babbitt could count.

On one hand, the aroma was sweet and pineappley. On the other there was a big wave of hops that were West Coast IPA heaven with a juicy mix of citrus and tropical fruits along with a dash of the floral. They signaled that this bier was deviating from the norm and was not akin to traditional pilsners. Those hops were very much present in the taste where their luscious fruit/floral flavors stood equal to the sweetness here which seemed to come from the pineapple as well as a more honeyed contribution from the malt. Although pungent, the hops were not particularly bitter and so allowed the earthy sweetness and gentle heat of the ancho chilies to come through. The lime flavor was restrained and seemed to be blended in with the hops.

The fruity/malty sweetness slowly faded on the finish. The ancho spiciness and its mild heat filled the vacuum along with a very pronounced spicy hop bitterness, the bier's only concession to a traditional pilsner. Just as at the start, my glass was quite pretty adorned as it was with plenty of Schaumhaftvermoegen. There were streaks of foam everywhere.

Being an imperial pilsner, Pils Al Pastor is a big beer. But not only in terms of its A.B.V. It has a medium body but a heavier mouthfeel with its pronounced sweetness. I liked the rush of fruit'n'floral hops here and they complemented the other fruit additions well. The flavors here are big but balanced…for the most part. The thing that I just couldn't abide was the sweetness. While I liked the combination of flavors, it was just too syrupy for my taste. All of the fruit flavors here made for an overall taste that was cloying and akin to soda, especially with the abundance of carbonation. I suspect that I'd have enjoyed this more had this been a non-imperial pils with more a more restrained fruitiness.

Junk food pairing: In keeping with authorial intent, I'd have plenty of chicharrón/cracklin/pork rinds on hand when consuming your Pils Al Pastor.

Should You Choose to Drink It: Mission Gose by Evil Twin Brewing

A few days ago I had a gose that Evil Twin conspired with Two Roads to brew. Now I have a solo effort from the Danish-American gypsy brewing concern - Mission Gose.

Mission Gose is brewed with eucalyptus. This is quite ironic because both Evil Twin's collaboration bier and a Scandinavian gose, Förgås, that I reviewed last week both had a minty herbal flavor that I described as tasting like eucalyptus. I've apparently stumbled upon a new trend in microbrewing. At least amongst northern European microbrewers.

Evil Twin is a so-called "gypsy brewery" meaning that there is no Evil Twin beer factory. Instead proprietor Jeppe Jarnit-Bjergsø uses the facilities of others to brew his recipes. In this case, Mission Gose was brewed in South Carolina at the Westbrook Brewing Company. The bier was released last spring although I purchased my bottle back in the autumn. I don't recall seeing it prior to that here in Madison but that could have simply been myopia on my part as opposed to preternaturally slow distribution.

Going into this endeavor, I had some idea of what a gose with eucalyptus or eucalyptus-like flavor tasted like so I was not really occupied with the novelty of this combination but rather with how well the bier was brewed. The gose is a light, sour wheat ale that is traditionally flavored with coriander and salt that sit behind the tartness and the style's generous effervescence. It's a zesty, fizzy sour delight. Or is supposed to be, anyway. Would Evil Twin adhere to tradition, more or less, or would it dismember the style ingredient by ingredient and reassemble them into a trendy Frankenstein gose-like beverage to appeal to craft drinkers who don't understand words like "balanced" and "subtle"?

I took it as a good omen that the label said that Mission is a mere 4% A.B.V. At least this was not an imperial double quad triple that could fell a horse with one sip. It poured a lovely gold hue which was much darker than I expected. It was quite clear although there was sediment at the bottom of the bottle which came out in my terminal pour. Huge was the dull white crown atop my glass. The head was frothy with fine bubbles. The action inside was no less busy as there were a lot of bubbles going up from the bottom. Very pretty.

The dull, herbal mint smell of eucalyptus was front and center in the aroma. It combined with the lemony/citrus scent of the lactic tartness and gave off this wonderfully mellow, fruity melon-like smell. I've never encountered such a thing in a beer's aroma before. Very nice.

That lemony tartness exploded out of the gate upon taking my first sip. As per normal, the puckering potential diminished a bit as my session went on and my tongue acclimatized itself to the acidity while the carbonation dried out the flavor a bit as well. The eucalyptus wasn't particularly strong but it was no slouch. Here the herbal aspect was most prominent with the mintiness being a bit dull.

Exactly how much salinity a gose should have is a matter of debate. I think I profoundly irritated someone at Next Door Brewing by suggesting their gose wasn't salty enough, amongst other sins. My impression is that there should be enough salt to accent the flavors, to boost them, but not so much that the drinker would say that the beer has been salted. My personal preference is that I should be able to taste the salt but only just. I like to taste the barest hint of salinity in my gose and Mission does just that. Very tasty.

At the finish the lemony tartness and some dryness from the carbonation lingered along with a bit of the eucalyptus. Aside from a couple spots, there wasn't much Schaumhaftvermoegen as it slid back into the bier.

Mission was a wonderful surprise for me as it just hit all the right notes for me. It had a lactic tartness quotient that was big yet never approached deadly. A nice light body was complemented by plenty of fizz for a lively, refreshing treat. While I cannot definitively say that there is no coriander, another trademark of the gose, I can tell you that I didn't taste any. Regardless, I enjoyed the eucalyptus as it works well with the light body and carbonation. And it had just the right salinity. Mission isn't a balanced beer but it gets the right flavors in the right proportions.

Junk food pairing: Pair any remaining bottles of Mission Gose you may have with something fairly light such as plain potato chips. I've read that gose was often paired with some Kümmel back in the day, also try some chivda with your glass.

From the Land of Ice and Snow: Geyser Gose by Evil Twin and Two Roads Brewing Companies

I must admit to being familiar with neither Evil Twin Brewing nor the Two Roads Brewing Company. While I've certainly seen the former's beers on store shelves, I am not sure that I've ever tasted their beer. Evil Twin is a gypsy brewery. Proprietor Jeppe Jarnit-Bjergsø doesn't own a brewing facility and instead formulates beers and then has someone else brew them to his specifications. In researching the company I discovered that Jeppe is the identical twin brother of Mikkel Borg Bjergsø, the owner of Mikkeller, the renowned Danish microbrewery, which is also a gypsy outfit.

From what I have gathered, Geyser Gose is a collaboration between Evil Twin and Two Roads and not simply the latter following the recipe of the former. Indeed, the can features the likenesses of both Bjergsø and Two Roads' brewmaster Phil Markowski. Well, half a likeness each, anyway. This being the case, Geyser Gose served as an intro for me to both breweries and a rare chance to try a Two Roads brew as the Connecticut brewery only distributes in New England.

Geyser Gose pours a hazy yet brilliant yellow color. I got a big, foamy white head that took an average amount of time to dissipate. I spied a few bubbles making their way up inside the beer.

The Two Roads website notes that the beer was brewed with "Icelandic moss, rye, herbs, sea kelp, skyr (Icelandic yogurt) and birch-smoked sea salt". I have to admit to being a tad leery of such everything-including-the-kitchen-sink kind of ingredient lists for beers. These lists sound gimmicky plus, if you put just one crystal of birch-smoked sea salt in your batch, then you can list it as an ingredient. I don't mean to impugn the reputations of the breweries at hand but I look at that list and ask myself, "Well, what kind of moss? Surely there's more than one type of moss in Iceland. What does moss taste like?"

Most of those ingredients will mean exactly nothing for the vast majority of people who drink this beer. While I don't doubt the accuracy of this list, it comes across more as some opaque braggadocio rather than helpful description.

Going in with the expectation that I'd be smelling something akin to Icelandic curry, I caught a crackery grain smell, some lemony tartness (Was this from the skyr?), and a nice herbal bouquet that was dull and minty - like eucalyptus, if I may reuse a description from my previous post. Geyser Gose has a fairly simple aroma yet it was decidedly pleasant. It was alluring in a rather conventional gose manner and not one of olfactory overload that made me want to find out just what the hell is going on with the beer.

Considering all of the ingredients used to make this beer, it was a bit surprising to me just how little I could taste of what I would think was moss or kelp. There were a couple different tart flavors. First was a moderate lemony/citrus one followed by a flavor that was like green apple and verjuice. The light body yielded a restrained cracker/graininess. I couldn't taste any salinity nor could I detect any smokiness. The closest thing to kelp and moss I tasted was the return of the herbal from the aroma. On my tongue it was a nice grassy mint flavor. Geyser Gose's carbonation plus the variety of tart flavors gave the beer a rather sharp, fizzy acidulousness that surrounded the rest of the flavors.

For the finish, the tartness flared up and then lingered with salt coming in at the very end. There was little Schaumhaftvermoegento be had with just a few spots and streaks to be had.

I will admit to being slightly disappointed that all of those exotic Arctic ingredients added up to a mere bit of herbal flavor. On the other hand, I thought that that minty herbal flavor made a nice departure from the traditional coriander. The variety of tart flavors was a real treat and they imbued the beer with some zestiness which was curiously invigorating on an overcast winter day.

Junk food pairing: Pair you Geyser Gose with some mild salt & vinegar potato chips as these will boost the tartness quotient. On the other hand, some rye chips will add salt and a spiciness that will both boost and provide contrast to the herbal flavors in the beer.