It's day 3 in our sours series and it's probably too early to say whether either of us are life-long converts but I will say these things seem to swing like a weather vane when it comes to being stud or dud!! This time we are serving ourselves up a good ol' slice of apple pie and here's hoping the brewery won't be eating humble pie!!
Brewery
Fallen Acorn Brewing Co
Name
Pie Hard
Style
Pastry sour
ABV
6.2%
Dan
The pour on this was magnificent in my opinion. Lovely and thick with soft bubbles of fizzy frogspawn grasping on to the curves of the glass!!
There was a slight appley aroma coming from this and that general smell of sour - it's hard to describe but almost akin to that whiff of malt vinegar heartily doused onto chippy chips, your nose knows there lies acidity ahead. At an absolute stretch, I would maybe suggest there was a miniscule trace of a pastry aroma - bready, biscuity sugar/vanilla but I'm not going to lie, given the can design I think this was 100% the placebo effect kicking in!
On the pie-hole (couldn't help myself) from an initial glug, this was a scrumpy version of a fairly dry, medium-sweet apple cider (Strongbow perhaps) - all that sour, Braeburn acidity but paired with a chunky, lactose-loaded body. To be honest I didn't love it but it did seem to be hitting half of the brief in that it was unquestionably a sour beer that tasted of apple.
As this warmed slightly and I ploughed on, oddly the apple seemed to diminish as did the sour. What I was left with was a sort of sweetened fruity NEIPA muddle of a beer - I wouldn't say the pastry was particularly detectable and the cinnamon was nowhere to be seen. Hand-on-heart, I wouldn't have even been confident saying that the fruit was apple if you asked me at this point!!
I'm not sure why but I actually quite enjoyed the juicy jumble that 2 thirds of this experience represented, however, it was a far cry from "everything good about apple pie and custard, wrapped up in a beer" and to be honest, I'm not sold that apple pie and custard in beer form is really a great idea to begin with!!
Dan - 3.5
Jack
Yippee pie yay, motherchugger... Not to come across all Hans Gruber here, but really? Drinking this beer made me feel the way Alan Rickman's character must have toward Bruce Willis' John McClane, confused and annoyed by its presence in equal and baffling measure.
When you first open a can of Pie Hard (I really hate the name of this beer) you are hit by a big waft of something. Dan said chip-shop chips in vinegar and I can see where he is coming from, but for me it was more like malic acid, which is unsurprising given the apples. Whatever it is, it is sour on the nose but, not in the most inviting way - I don't tend to kick back with a glass of apple cider vinegar of an evening. However, I guess it was an appley sourness so I can forgive that, given this is an apple pie sour and all.
Yes, this does pour with a good body, but I didn't really dig the colour. For me Pie Hard looked a bit too much like cloudy piss when I would have rather it had looked like cloudy apple juice (the discerning eye can tell the difference). Before this gets too negative, I will say Pie Hard held its head well and once I got over the idea that it looked a bit pissy, I will admit it made an attractive proposition.
The actual flavour of Pie Hard is ok. It is really quite sour but doesn't go so far as to set your teeth on edge, which is good for me, newbie that I am to the sour game. I did struggle to get a whole lot of apple flavour but did detect a very subtle buttery note from the pastry. The buttery flavour would have rounded things out more and would have seen Pie Hard achieving its claim to be apple pie and custard wrapped up in a beer, were it not totally dominated by the sourness.
To me this was more like a slightly malty, very sour cider that hasn't full matured yet. Yes there is a hint of apple and pastry but perhaps given some more time in the can this would have developed more. I also agree with Dan that the sourness began to dissipate the more of this I drank.
In summation, I didn't love this beer, I feel it promised a lot and didn't really deliver the more it went on, much like the series after which this beer is named I guess.
Score - 3.25
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