Beer # 125 Kissmeyer Nordic Pale Ale

Nordic Pale Ale

Beau's All Natural Brewing Company
Collaboration with Anders Kissmeyer and B-side Label

Vankleek Hill, Ontario, Canada
Independent
Flavoured APA 5.0 % ABV Brown Class Bottle 750 ml
$4.85 (Canadian) At LCBO 
Twitter: @Beausallnatural


Tonight's beer is an interesting Collaboration from Anders Kissmeyer and The good folks at Beau's All Natural. Anders is Described on the Beau's website as a "One man gypsy beer company" he previously worked with Nørrebro Bryghus, the innovative brewhouse in Copenhagen, Denmark. I have Tasted three of their beers here,

Yarrow

here, and here (The last one was my favourite). Prior to being a driving force in that brewery, Anders worked for Carlsberg as the quality control officer. He flew around the world ensuring that carlsberg beer in Uganda tasted like Carlsberg beer in Mexico. On a trip to the States he met Brooklyn Brewing Company's rock star brewmaster Garret Oliver and had his eyes opened to American style craft beer. He left Carlsberg to persue his dreams and ten years later it seems he still had more dreaming to do and has left Nørrebro Bryghus, to open Kissmeyer Beer. His Facebook page is here (mostly in Danish).

Tonight's beer has a lot of components... and I mean a lot. There are three different grain malts, 3 herbal additives and hops, maple syrup, rosehips, AND cranberries. Sweet Gale yarrow and heather make up the herbals. So this is going to be a complex beer, which is par for the course with Anders, as his beers from Nørrebro Bryghus were quite complex as well. So I look forward to trying this.

Sweet Gale

Enough already... onto the tasting.

Dusty gold in colour with a slight cloudiness to it. The fluffy white head is made up of medium sized bubbles. The aroma is herbal hops, citrus, and spicy. Notes of Dusty Miller (the flower), hay, and yarrow. Slight muskiness, earthy, weedy. Effervescent sweet and tart, Yarrow is prominent, followed by the sweetness of oats and the heady malty taste of dark rye bread. Light citrus and such a tiny hint of cranberries and ginger. As it warms you get the sweetness of rosehips and and a fruity, spicy finish. Aeration gives us a woodsy, outdoors, field at the edge of the woods smell, very vegetative and sweet. Finish is not unlike a bitter aperitif wine, cleansing, and refreshing.



Impressions: Fail, So-so, Pass, Exceptional 


Cost: 5/6 PASS
Colour: 5/6 PASS
Beer Style: 5/6 PASS
Re-Order:  5/6 PASS
Experience:  5/6 PASS


Final Thoughts:

When I first read the ingredients list for this beer I was taken aback. Barley, rye, and oat malts, hops, wild sweet gale, maple syrup, cranberries, rosehips, yarrow, and heather flowers, all organic of course. It seemed to me to be an impossible task to make all of these ingredients work together. Regular readers will recognise some of these ingredients as we have discussed medieval beers before, namely Gruits, which is what I thought this beer was aiming for. However it was plain to see that they had merged a gruit style into an APA, and it actually worked. Pick this one up while it still is in stores.


CJT


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