It may strike the reader as strange that I have never reviewed a Jolly Pumpkin beer. After all, Jolly Pumpkin is one of the major brewers of wild and sour ales in the United States. As a matter of fact, I like many of their beers. Their Bam Bière is one of my favorite year-round Saisons and makes a great session beer (if you are in Ann Arbor, MI, you can have it on tap in their pub). Their Calabaza Blanca is an excellent tart wit bier. And they also do spontaneous fermentation. So I was quite interested in tasting one of their limited releases, Baudelaire Beer IO Saison.

Another reason why I was interested in this beer is that it was brewed with rose hips, rose petals and hibiscus. Home brewers often have a hard time producing a beer that is sufficiently sour and one natural way to move things along is to add herbs with tart characteristics. The most accomplished sour beer I have brewed to date involved the addition of a whopping amount of hibiscus and brett to an ale after primary fermentation. Generous amounts of hibiscus also add a nice reddish hue to a brew.

My bottle of Baudelaire Beer IO Saison is blend 7/8 and was bottled on 2-4-2011. The beer pours an opaque reddish amber. The aroma evokes well-balanced and restrainted brettanomyces notes, strawberry, hibiscus, and rose petal. The taste is equally restrained; moderately tart, citrus, floral, slightly sweet (like dry caramel), earthy, and there is a little astringency, too. The beer is smooth and finishes on a slightly sweet note.  This spritzy beer is a pleasure to drink and would constitute an excellent introduction to sour styles. Quite an elegant brew with a pretty label.