One of beer’s most remarkable aspects is its versatility. On top of the fundamental ingredients of water, grain, yeast, and hops, a brewer can add almost any extra ingredients (unless you’re in Germany, where there are literal brewing laws about what you can put into beer). Ingredients found in beer today include chocolate, coffee, nuts, waffles, cookies, spices, cocoa, marshmallows, breakfast cereal, toffee, and the focus of today’s Peaks & Pints to-go beer flight — fruit. When brewers add whole fruit, fresh-picked, never frozen, from a nearby farm or orchard to their sours, it’s magic. Yeast and souring bacteria live on the skin of fruit. These wild, naturally occurring additions bring another layer of distinct flavor to tart beers. Stop by our Proctor District craft beer bar, bottle shop and restaurant and grab Peaks and Pints Beer Flight: Fruited Sours.
Peaks and Pints Beer Flight: Fruited Sours
RaR Out of Order: Get Off My Sand
5% ABV
In 2013, J.T. Merryweather and Chris Browhan opened Real Ale Revival, or RaR Brewing, on the banks of the Chesapeake Bay in Cambridge, Maryland. The two graduates of Cambridge-South Dorchester High School had left the Eastern Shore for college and followed careers elsewhere before taking their homebrewing hobby to the next level, and by next level we mean a professional brewery in an 80-year-old former pool hall and bowling alley with a goal of producing well-balanced American pale ales and Belgian inspired brews 10 barrels at a time. RaR’s Out of Oder: Get Off My Sand is brewed for the Tusken Raiders, less formally referred to as Sand People or simply as Tuskens, the nomadic sentients indigenous to the desert planet Tatooine in the film, Star Wars. Get off My sand is RaR’s lactose-infused sour base conditioned on mango, pineapple, passionfruit, banana, and toasted marshmallow.
Great Notion Strawberry Shortcake
6% ABV
Great Notion Brewing brewed a strawberry version of their Zest Berliner Weisse series, the cousin to their Blueberry Muffin and Key Lime Pie sours. Made with Oregon-grown strawberries, this sweet, tart ale hits the nose with strawberries and cream. Strawberry candy dominates the tongue with hints of vanilla cream and cream of wheat peeking through.
Unsung Disrupto
6% ABV
Ohio native and Unsung Brewing founder Mike Crea — who is certified by the Cicerone Program and earned a diploma in brewing technology from the Siebel Institute in Chicago — brews small batches of craft beer in Tustin, California, but sells a majority of them up north from a modernized century old marmalade factory in Anaheim, the sudsiest town in Orange County. Founded in 2015, comic book fan Crea drinks West Coast IPAs while watching superhero movies, but he and the crew brews all styles, including fruited sour Disrupto with a blend of blueberry and plum.
Tox Chips and Dip
6.5% ABV
The idea of Tox Brewing started as a daydream between Dayne Laski, Michael Zaccaro, and Jon Ahlcrona a few days before Thanksgiving in 2015. They were standing over a converted 10-gallon Igloo cooler stirring hot water into mixed grains. That dream turned into an ongoing conversation, and then a plan, and finally Tox Brewing in New London, Connecticut. They collaborated with Little House Brewing in Chester, Conn., on Chips and Dip, a fruited sour brewed with tortilla chips, mango, hot peppers, key lime, lime zest, and a touch of sea salt emulating chips, spicy mango salsa and a margarita.
Drekker Slang Du Jour — Raspberry Cheesecake
6.7% ABV
This sour a la mode sports ridiculously delicious cheesecake flavor from their mad scientist process and by being stuffed raspberry, granola crust, lactose, vanilla, and real cream cheese. It’s decadent, creamy, and preposterously thick.
LINK: Peaks & Pints beer and cider cooler inventory
