Review: New Belgium Tartastic Lemon Ginger Sour

I'm going to post the same thing I seem to say in nearly every one of my boring reviews: I've been a fan of New Belgium for several years now, possibly around six years. For a long time, their beer wasn't available in Manitoba until one day Fat Tire made a random appearance at local LCs a few years back. We mostly get Fat Tire and Ranger IPA but once in a blue moon one of their seasonal beers will come out. This week it was their Tartastic Lemon Ginger Sour. I lost all my tasting notes for this beer because iCloud decided that I absolutely didn't need them.. Ha! Turns out I had emailed the notes to myself!

The tasting notes page on their website says that the beer will have strong citrus and sulfurs, honey, white wine and ginger notes, as well as a strong sourness that turns moderately sweet.

Appearance: What surprised me about this beer was how lemony this beer actually looked. It was a bright lemon peel meets golden ale. There's a light to moderate amount of head on top that mainly stays to the side of the glass but also collects into the very middle of the glass itself. Kind of reminds me a bit of a gose

Aroma: It's moderately lemony, with an additional hint of that chemically "lemon pledge" aroma to it. It's very lightly tart which surprises me because I was hoping for that lemon sourness that raises your hair on the back of your head. The ginger doesn't really seem to be making any appearance in here yet but there's a slight herbal yeastiness in there.

Taste: While the ginger finally makes its initial presence in this beer, it's pretty light. Sure, I'm not expecting this to be a ginger beer but I was hoping for a good deal of heat in this beer! It does have an ever so slight hint of ginger heat that would be comparable to a big soda brand Ginger Ale. The lemon flavour has a hint of that lemon cough drop taste to it but while the lemon certainly dominates the ginger notes here, I was hoping for face puckering sourness from the medley of lemon and ginger. It's still pretty easy to drink but a bit too light for a sour for me. Lastly, there's a bit of hint of grassy hops mingling in there as well.

Overall Thoughts: Pretty mediocre unfortunately. As I've already stated, I was hoping for more of a face puckering intense tart flavour but seeing that I really like New Belgium's products, I'll be buying a few more bottles of this to compare with other lemon-themed beers with gorgeous spring weather finally hitting the prairies!

http://www.newbelgium.com/beer/tartastic