Review: Atypical FERDA Boysenberry Sour Ale

Figure it out? This fruity sour sniper is made FERDA Boys n'Berries, Allegedly. 5% ABV

When a can of beer, especially a Sour tells you to keep a beer cold or to drink fresh, you better listen or else you'll get a gusher - something that's quite common any time I forget that I bought Sours. I picked up a can of FERDA Boysenberry Sour from Atypical Brewing & Barrelworks this time last year and have been waiting for a good time to review it. 

This isn't the first Letterkenny/Shoresy themed beer to ever come out, but it may be the first one out of the United States. Ferda is a Boysenberry and basil kettle sour, something I think "the Skids" would absolutely be drinking if they weren't consuming so many various kinds of drugs.

Appearance: Before I took the photo it was pretty much a glass of bright pink foam and a little bit of a purply juice at the bottom, but as I wait ever so patiently I'm able to add more beer to the glass. So much purple! The lacing is there but mostly jam residue.

Aroma: Has quite a herb-forward profile at the beginning, which is easily to point out at the basil. There's a sweet, somewhat tartness of it that I can only describe as raspberry jam and blackberries. The sourness of the beer isn't tingling the nostrils compared to many others I've had over the years - and I always have to state in pretty much very Sour review that I'm not a fan of sours for some reason.. and here we go again..

Taste: Pretty aggressive on the basil, which in this case isn't actually a bad thing. The basil compliments the Boysenberry quite a bit, it's almost like when you bite into a strawberry, there's the sweet fruitiness to it but then you get a sourness and what I'd say is a slight almost "leafy"/"vegetal" taste to it, that's what it reminds me here. It's definitely giving off a tart/sour punch to my whole mouth but it's not overly aggressive to the point where I need a glass of water or an antacid after, it's mild at best. Good amount of fruitiness from the boysenberries. Jammy with notes of raspberry and blackberries, moderately tart but also sweet.

Overall Thoughts: This friendly Canadian Hoser says that I'm considering this brewery to be an honourary Manitoban brewery - it's only minutes away from Canada and located in the Assiniboine River basin so I consider them to be one of the local breweries for that and for the fact that they did a Letterkenny themed beer. FERDA itself is a solid sour, quite herbal but it definitely works. We probably won't ever see Atypical beer up in Canada due to weird liquor laws but I've been harassing them to come up to Canada sometime and I've been harassing Section 6 Brewery to go down to Minot for a couple days and hopefully do a collaboration or many one day.

If you ever happen to be in Minot for some reason, a stop at Atypical is a serious must - their tap list changes on a very regular basis.

While we're on the topic of North Dakota, kind of - RIP to Fargo Brewing. They were the grand daddy of the craft beer revolution in North Dakota. Atypical and Fargo collabed on a beer in the past called the A-Team. Unfortunately I only ever tried a few of their products over the years.. but their collab with a local puppy rescue featuring some of their dogs that need a good loving home pulled on pretty much all our heartstrings back in the day.