Kontra Brews

It's been 5 months since I brewed this beer and almost a month since I bottled it. I finished off the beer with 55g of Newport a week before bottling. With the gravity finishing off at 1.009, the beer comes in a touch lighter than planned at 3.4% ABV. As such it's very much a light, fresh, summer beer; and with spring just warming up, I seem to have timed this quite well. I was a bit conservative when priming it for bottling, aiming at only 2.8 vol of CO₂, in retrospect I ought probably to have been a bit more aggressive in that regard. The carbonation is slightly lower than I would like it.

Appearance

The beer is a very pale straw colour and almost, but not quite, clear. I'm hoping that a bit more time conditioning in the bottle will allow the bugs to munch up a few more proteins and clear the body up a little bit more. The head is white, and fleeting. This is not hugely surprising as sour beers rarely have a head that sticks around.

Smell

The brett from the De Bom blend comes through well in the nose, with hints of olives, lemons and perhaps a touch of goat. The funk is not overwhelming, though, and gives a nice bit of interest to a beer that I fear might otherwise be a bit bland. The hops added at the end have all but disappeared, with only a hint of hoppy aroma in the nose. Perhaps Newport was just not assertive enough a variety for this.

Taste

The lacto sourness provides a lemony, vinous quality with hints of apple and some grainy character too. The body is rather thin, and higher carbonation would have been a good idea. For my taste it could certainly be more sour as the sourness is quite gentle, more reminiscent of a tart apple juice than a riesling.

Final Words

For a first attempt I'm not too unhappy with how this turned out, but next time I will need to try and get a bit more sourness into the beer. I might try giving the lacto more time to do its thing before adding the yeast, or perhaps I will try to aquire a more aggressive lacto strain through spontaneous fermentation.