Summer Squishy is a fruit sour brewed with pineapple, coconut, lactose, vanilla and sea salt.
So, today would have been the Great Taste of the Midwest.
It’s the first time since “Top Gun” was in theaters in 1986 that there’s been a summer with no Great Taste. (The pandemic cost us the “Top Gun” reboot this year, too.)
Anyone even vaguely aware of the craft beer community in Madison knows the magnitude of this loss, and I’m not going to belabor the point. I’ve written year after year about how great the Taste truly is.
I’m sure there were many do-it-yourself Great Tastes this weekend, with (hopefully) small groups of friends in backyards sharing great — or at least interesting — beers (hopefully while maintaining social distance).
The Great Taste’s organizers, the Madison Homebrewers and Tasters Guild, even provided the drinking vessel for such events, a “Backyard Edition” stainless steel tumbler instead of the fest’s small tasting glass. Great Taste Chairman Jason Walters said sales of the tumbler had raised around $25,000 for local charitable causes — not far off from the $30,000 the guild donates in normal years.
For my Great Taste stand-in, I went to my favorite Madison bottle shop and picked up a pretty weird-sounding beer from a Midwestern brewery I don’t usually drink a lot of beer from.
As I write this, I’m planning to pour it in some previous year’s Great Taste glass and drink it outside at 1 p.m., the time the horn sounds and the massive line outside the gate at Olin Park starts moving in. I might even get just a little too sweaty beforehand, to make the experience a little more authentic.
Summer Squishy
Brewed by: Oliphant Brewing, Somerset
Style: The label says this is a fruit sour brewed with pineapple, coconut, lactose, vanilla and sea salt. Vanilla and lactose (milk sugar) are what makes a milkshake “IPA,” while sea salt and sour points to gose, a German wheat ale. So maybe this is a … milkshake gose? Crazy thing is this surely wouldn’t have been the weirdest beer at the hypothetical 2020 Great Taste.
What it’s like: If that sounds like a beer version of a pina colada, you’re on the right track.
Where, how much: Oliphant has been sending a small amount of beer to a handful of Madison bottle shops for a couple of years now. My four-pack of 12-ounce cans cost $11.49 at Trixie’s Liquor.
Booze factor: 5% ABV.
Up close: Summer Squishy pours a pale straw color with a minimal head that quickly dissipates — a common characteristic for sour ales. If you forgot what was in the can between opening and pouring, a sniff reminds you of that tropical promise, with the coconut particularly forward in the aroma, rounded into a kind of coconut cream character by the vanilla and lactose. With a sip Summer Squishy reveals itself as a beer after all, with all that stuff working together with a what drinks like a nice little blonde ale. Compared with what I was expecting, the adjuncts’ effect is relatively restrained, though that creamy coconut flavor is further forward than the pineapple. The beer is barely sour, and detected very little if any salinity, so the salt might be in there to just balance out all the sweet stuff. And Summer Squishy is balanced, finishing far cleaner than something like this has any right to.
There’s a thing called a beer fest beer — the kind of beer you can enjoy for two to four ounces, but wouldn’t want to drink an entire glass of. You can probably tell I was expecting Summer Squishy to be just that, but I enjoyed all three cans I put down for this review. (Had to save that last can for Saturday.) It ended up representing two common highlights of the Great Taste: the lesser-known beer that punches way above its hype weight, and the clean, low-ABV palate cleanser that cuts through the big barrel-aged beers and acid bombs.
But as much as I enjoyed this little foray courtesy of Oliphant, I’m looking forward to having three-ounce pours of those highlights again next year.
Bottom line: 4 stars (out of 5)
Nonic pint
NONIC PINT: This is my workhorse. Somewhat similar to the shaker glass, the nonic ("no-nick") glass has a broader top than bottom, so it's stackable, which wins points in the food service industry, but it has a little flare on the neck that helps retain the beer's aroma, although not as much as some of the other glasses we'll see below. This glass is English in origin, so it's traditionally paired with styles like brown ale, pale ale, porter and IPA. If a beer is really special, though, I'm looking for a glass that focuses aroma better. Its large volume has made it useful in my home also as a water glass, if you're into that sort of thing.
Tulip
TULIP: No other glass in my cupboard says "I'm a beer geek" more than the tulip glass, but that distinctive stem and the dramatic shape have purpose. The stem minimizes warming hand-to-glass contact. The shape preserves the beer's head and allows the aromas to be concentrated at the inward taper while also providing an easier-to-drink outward taper at the top. Some call this dandiest of beer glasses a Belgian ale glass, but I find it also works well for heavy-aroma beers such as IPAs and stouts.
Goblet
GOBLET: This isn't quite a true goblet, which tends to be heavier, with a broader mouth and less inward taper — all reasons I like this glass more. The stem and inward taper are similar to the tulip, but that taper continues all the way to the mouth, preserving those aromas. Some call this a porter/stout glass, focusing on color, to which I'd add amber for the same reason and IPA, for the aroma-enhancing qualities.
Footed pilsner
FOOTED PILSNER: This tall, slender glass was developed to showcase its namesake beer's light color and effervescence. And the bubbles do look really good in there, but I find it a little too teetery to use it for much more than its traditional pairing.
Weizen
WEIZEN: One of the most distinctive glasses in the beer world, the tall, high-volume weizen glass evolved to hold German wheat beers. It's noted for its height and large volume, which were designed to show off the hefeweizen's trademark cloudiness and promote the yeasty, fluffy white head. A shorter and much smaller version of this glass became the standard "tapper" glass in Wisconsin bars several generations back. Loyal readers will know I don't do much recreational drinking of wheat beers, and the weizen glass isn't versatile enough to get much use with other styles I drink more often.
Willi Becher
WILLI BECHER: This might be the best beer glass in the world. The Willi Becher is also known as the German pint, and while it looks pretty straightforward, there's a barely noticeable inward taper at the top that does that aroma thing really well. There's no stem, so it's a little more practical than the goblet or tulip, and it's a little less fancy, which I usually consider a plus. Many beer bars use the Willi Becher as their default serving vessel for a 16- or 20-ounce pour. It's a tapered variant of the stange, a glass traditionally used to serve German bocks, kölsches, altbiers, but I use it for just about anything.
Irish pint
IRISH PINT: The shapely Irish pint — most of them you've seen probably had the Guinness logo on the side instead of the Leinie's one above — succeeds where the shaker fails because of that gentle curve that usually flares inward at the very top.
Snifters
SNIFTERS: I turn to one of my snifters — both have logos, so I've never used them for column photos — when I break out a really special beer. The snifter focus beer aromas more than any of the other glasses here, and the smaller size is helpful with high-alcohol (and, generally, high flavor) beers. It's a mainstay of any good beer bar, particularly for 6-, 8- or 10-ounce pours.
Got a beer you’d like the Beer Baron to pop the cap on? Contact Chris Drosner at chrisdrosner@gmail.com or follow him on Twitter @WIbeerbaron.
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August 08, 2020 at 09:00PM
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