Bear Worship B.A. Golden Sour

Born in Toronto, Bear Worship B.A. Golden Sour (5?) is a hefty sour ale from the team at Blood Brothers Brewing. It’s a 9% barrel aged sour sold in 500mL bottles with gorgeous ursine labels.

Bear Worship is a cloudy orange grog that decants with a thin layer of white suds. It boasts a tangy aroma with tangerine and peach elements. The beer is certainly sour, but it is backed by some sweetness from the barrel aging process to give it a pleasing balance and, by some alchemy, to also mask the 9% alcohol content to a devilish degree. The key flavour is sour fruitiness, but it sidles into faintly woody territory by the finish. There is next to no bitterness on display.

A boozy brute from BBB, Bear Worship is a tart and satisfying potion.

Rating: 8.5 out of 10.

Half Remembered Dream

The label that adorns the 750mL bottles of Half Remembered Dream indicates that the “blend of golden sour beers aged in oak barrels with rose hips and hibiscus” contained within “ages gracefully”. So I did something that I thought myself unable to do—I let the stuff age. Nothing ridiculous. I didn’t cellar it for five years or anything. But I let the beer, brewed and bottled in August 2018, sit until January 2020. Not nothing when you consider both my small living space and the volume of beer I consume.

Half Remembered Dream comes from Small Pony Barrel Works out of Kanata, Ontario. It’s a 5% barrel-aged sour with a rose gold colour, just a touch of sediment, a short-lived off-white head, and a pretty decent constellation of carbonation. It has a tart, nectarine and berry nose accented with a floral hint. The tartness and not-quite-ripe nectarine elements are evident in the flavour as well. Barrel-aged woodiness is present, but not dominant. There is almost no bitterness to speak of, but the beer’s inherent sourness balances out what might otherwise be a too sweet offering.

Never having tasted it fresh, I can’t say if letting Half Remembered Dream marinate for over a year was worthwhile. However, I’ll say I really enjoyed what turned up in my glass. I’d have liked the alcohol content to have been a bit higher, but the delicate, slightly floral elements were able to shine as a result.

Rating: 8.5 out of 10.

Auko

Auko comes from Burdock, out of Toronto. It’s a busy little brew—a sour dark ale aged with raspberries, sour cherries and cab franc skins for a year in cab franc barrels. It clocks in at a boisterous 9.1% alcohol and comes in 375mL bottles with simple and elegant labels.

The beer is a dark number with faint ruby highlights and almost no head. It has a very tart scent that is both fruity and funky, with a punchy cherry blast. It has a disappointingly thin and flat, but the flavour is quite lovely, with sharp winey notes and lots of tart fruit.

True, Auko was in my fridge for a few weeks before I uncapped it, but it really was thinner than it ought to have been in spite of that. Still, great flavour and potency made for a fairly enjoyable beer.

Rating: 7.0 out of 10.