Oro Blanco Grapefruit Sour

Shortly after American Thanksgiving, I was working through my yearly (ish) listening to Arlo Guthrie’s highly enjoyable anti-war anthem "Alice’s Restaurant Masacree" while I washed a sink of dishes. However, I only had about ten minutes’ worth of dishes and the Masacree clocks in at 18:37, so I had some time to spare on the back end. As a result, I decided to grab a 473mL can of Oro Blanco Grapefruit Sour and give it a go.

Oro Blanco is brewed in Victoria, B.C. by the Phillips Brewing Company. It’s a 4.2% alcohol beer made using wheat, malted barley, grapefruit, lime juice, and lactobacillus yeast. The resulting grog is a hazy, orange gold colour. It pours with a thin cover of white head and has a pungent, tart citrus whiff. As sour beers go, Oro Blanco isn’t assertively mouth-puckering. Rather, it’s tart in a fresh fruit sort of way, with lots of juicy notes to balance things out. The back end sees the sourness pick up steam, but it never ratchets up beyond tanginess.

The beer is refreshing, highly quaffable sour from a great brewery on Canada’s west coast. It’s sessionable on paper, though I can never really get behind the idea of drinking more than one sour ale in a go. In all, it delivers exactly what it promises, and in a pretty agreeable package. This is not a compelling, funky sour; rather, it’s a juicy, tart, and approachable ale.

Rating: 8.0 out of 10.