Hacienda Beer Company is starting a new series called Forbidden Phrases, intended for beers made with ingredients that wouldn’t normally be thought of together — at its extreme, what might be thought of as forbidden in beer. The first in the series is hitting Madison shelves this week. It’s a saison made with turmeric and peaches.
What is it? Forbidden Phrases from Hacienda Beer Company of Baileys Harbor.
Style: Beer purists consider the saison more of a story than a style. It falls into a broad group of farmhouse ales originally made for farmhands in Belgium’s Wallonia region. The name comes from the French for season. They can be found in a range of colors from light hazy straw to a dark copper-amber. They are generally light- to medium-bodied with lots of carbonation. They tend to finish dry, often with a slight pepper-like spiciness from the strain of yeast used to make them. Saisons range from 4.5 to 8.5 percent ABV.
Background: Forbidden Phrases appears in a distinctive 500 mL bottle intended to call attention to Hacienda’s bottle-conditioned product. This beer was brewed nearly a year and a half ago, aging for nine months in oak foeders before being blended with another oak barrel beer, along with turmeric and peaches, and then aged for another three months. After that, it was bottled and cellared for an additional six months before finally being released.
The combination of turmeric and peaches makes this beer distinctive. An eight-barrel batch included about 10 pounds of turmeric, a ginger-like root that was chopped by hand and added to the fermenter along with approximately 500 pounds of peach puree. The turmeric lends a bit of yellow color but it’s a spicy allspice character that stands out, while the peaches offer fruity sourness. “We wanted to pick two ingredients that you might not necessarily think go together, but they do and even complement each other,” says McMahon.
Forbidden Phrases finishes at 6.8 percent ABV. It sells for $12-$14/bottle. The next beer to appear in the Forbidden Phrases series will most likely be released in late fall, and McMahon says he’s not decided on the specific forbidden blend that will be used for that next installment.
Tasting notes:
- Aroma: Light hints of peach and a touch of yeasty funk.
- Appearance: Bright, hazy yellow-golden. A thick, bubbly, soft off-white head.
- Texture: Medium- to light-bodied, bubbly, crisp.
- Taste: Sharp peach sourness is up front. The yeasty earthy funkiness comes in the background.
- Finish/Aftertaste: Funky, dry and sour. The turmeric with its spicy ginger-like flavor and pepper heat is most noticeable in the end.
Glassware: The tulip glass will call attention to the beer’s light yellow-golden color, while the flared lip supports its bubbly white head and allows the turmeric and peach aromas to emerge.
Pairs well with: seafood and well-aged Gouda (my tasting choice for this review was Castello gouda). Because of a characteristic crisp, dry, spicy finish, the saison is a great beer for a wide range of foods.
The Verdict: I really like the amount of peach sourness and the dry, spicy finish of turmeric in this first edition of Forbidden Phrases. Light fruity sourness, earthy spiciness, funk, light acidity and modest strength means this beer is very approachable to most drinkers. The peach comes out early in the aroma and the taste, which sets up the funkiness of the yeast and the spicy turmeric that follows. Does peach fruitiness next to spicy turmeric work? It does.
