Jolly Pumpkin Perseguidor (Batch 4)

Brewed by Jolly Pumpkin Artisan Ales
Style: Sour Ale
Dexter, Michigan USA

On tap at the stone 13th fest. Pours a dark brown (slightly red), tan head. Cherries, caramel, sweet malt, lemon, a bit of funk and dark malts, and some sourness. Not an extreme sour, but still very tasty.

Pours dark brown with a thick tan head. Instant tart and sour fruit flavor. Another great Jolly Pumpkin beer.

12 oz bottle. Some sour fruit aromas. Flavor was not as sour as I had expected.. Still very good. Yummy beer.

12 oz bottle. Dark brown with tannish froth. Nose is sour lemon candy, leather, cinnamon and faint chocolate cherry. Juicy and vinous with a slight tingle. Taste is Concord grape, vanilla, caramel, sour peach and dried apricot. Crazy stuff.

Bottle thanks to kryptic!
Plum-sepia colored, no head but a few legs. Nose reminds of Earthmonk, heavy berry fruit, brown coco, some alcohol. Definitely flemish, but not quite as sour as Earthmonk. Incredibly fruity flavor, as fruity as I’ve tasted. Loads of sweet pineapple, orange, strawberry, and kiwi, also some coco, brett hints, even some scotch. Incredible blend. Finishes with dry fruit, light-moderate body, better carbonation than most flemish sours. Incredibly enjoyable stuff, satisfyingly complex though not very sour. Not mind-blowing complexity, but great stuff anyway, and I love the flavor here, the BdM fruit topped with the quality wild yeast control evident in the GR BdM. Oddly enough, it’s the least JP-like beer that I’ve had, but it’s still fantastic.

I must confess, as I am want to do, that the first time I heard of the Jolly Pumpkin Brewery from Dexter, Michigan, I thought they must be crazy to brew Halloween beers all year long. Yeah, I went there. Thankfully, that horribly ignorant mistake has been corrected and I both know and love Jolly Pumpkin for who they really are: an artisanal brewer of fine barrel-aged sour ales. There were 2 buzz words in there. Did you catch them? No? Let me point them out to you then: barrel-aged and sour. Let us now dive into their wonderful world of artisanal ales with the Perseguider, a blend of Oak Aged Sour Ales.

Hazy orange with brownish hues and no head though a gathering of big bubbles seem to have convened at the center of his precipice. I waste no time in nosing her bouquet for all she is worth; a wet nose is a happy nose. Pineapples, kiwi, apple skins, aloe, salt, pepper, granny smith jolly ranchers all served with a pinch of sunshine and soft leather. An amazingly tropical nose, but very stingy on the sour esters which hopefully will be rectified in the palate. My first quaff is thin, a little too thin if you ask me, and light in both weight and impact. There is a sense of dry vegetable leafing, aloe palms, and a whisper of a tropical breeze carrying faint esters of fruits. No spice, no sour punch, and certainly not what I expect from Jolly Pumpkin. I’m rather disappointed. The Perseguider is OK, but nothing to write home about, especially for sour fanatics. One last quaff reveals a bit more as leather and spice lingers for a bit in the finish, and then all is lost.

Jolly Pumpkin usually brews damn good beers so I definitely won’t judge them based in this offering. Though for someone leery of that wonderful crack addiction known as sour ales, it may be right up your alley. Me, I’ll stick to their other offerings such as La Roja, Oro de Calabaza, Bam Biere, and so on. I’d like to see Jolly Pumpkin go back and redo the Perseguider. It is a blend, after all, which means each blend can be different, and in this case, better than the last.

My 1st beer of the MiBG Summer Fest 2009, Friday session: The pour was actually less than appealing, reddish muddy brown with almost no head. The aroma has notes of tart cherries, light funk, oak, herbal and earthy esters with a hint of chocolate and caramel. The taste is tart and twangy with nice light soft malt undertones. Expected JP yeast character that is earthy and bretty with dry woody notes. The mouth feel is soft yet mouth watering refreshing, dry finish but not bone dry. A lovely creation.

This poured a murky brown color with an off white head. Aroma was tart, vineous, and a bir fruity as well. Flavor was sour, funk, light citrus fruit and some roastiness as well. It was hard ot wrap my head around this one.