Eagle Tree Spontaneous Ale by Van Dieman Brewing

For this week’s beer we go back down to Tasmania for our third post in a row.  You may have detected that I have an affinity for Tassie craft beers.  What with Ocho and Detonate IPA from Little Rivers the past two weeks, and one of my all-time favourites, Puddle Maker by Last Rites from a little while back, that would be a solid assumption.  And that’s not even mentioning Bruny Island Beer.  This week is a really cool, and pretty different one.  Eagle Tree Spontaneous Ale from Van Dieman brewing is an extremely unique and tasty beer experience.

Right off the bat, I’ll apologise to any readers who are already familiar with a spontaneous ale.  I was not.  I thought ‘spontaneous ale’ was akin to ‘special ale’ or some other meaningless descriptor that a brewery might put on a beer to make it sound exciting and unique. Boy was I wrong. And I went down a massive rabbit hole of what actually constitutes a spontaneous ale and how their made.  So if you are familiar with this already, probably skip down a paragraph or two.  Because I’m going to share what will probably be semi-to-fairly accurate detail everything I’ve been taught about this type of beer by Google, Wikipedia, and my brother-in-law Eric.

A spontaneous ale is one that has no yeast added to it.  Instead, they place the wort in large flat, rectangular, open-topped vessels called coolships.  These are then left exposed to the air.  The key here, is that no yeast is added to the wort.  The naturally occurring bacteria and yeasts in the air are allowed to enter the wort (some sources I read refer to the process of the bacteria and yeasts entering the wort as ‘inoculation’ but that sounds a bit too medical and non-delicious I reckon).  It is these bacteria and yeasts that cause the fermentation in the beer, hence the term ‘spontaneous’ ale.  As the fermentation starts, the ale is usually place into barrels to complete the brewing.

The whole process is referred to as lambic brewing.  This was the earliest form of brewing originating with Belgian monks in the 1700’s some time (according to Wikipedia at least).  It doesn’t seem to in very common practice these days either (at least outside of Belgium).  A quick google search seems to indicate there’s a solid handful of breweries in the States that do lambic brewing and a sprinkling around the rest of the world. That includes two in Australia, both of which are in Tassie.

So anyway, now that you’ve read through my hopefully semi accurate history of the spontaneous ale, on to Eagle Tree Spontaneous Ale specifically.  Having never tried a spontaneous ale before, I wasn’t entirely sure what to expect.  I knew it was supposed to be a vaguely sour beer, but that’s all I had to go on.  This beer was definitely a sour, but I reckon that ‘tart’ is the better adjective to use.  But after that, adjectives begin to fail me.  This beer has some much going on.  The complexity bubbling underneath is something I can’t really put my finger on, but that I very much enjoyed.  It was very much a beer experience unlike one I’d had before.

I also have it on good authority that spontaneous ales cellar well.  So I immediately turned around and ordered 6 more (2 of Eagle Tree and 2 more each of the other spontaneous ales Van Dieman has on offer).  I seriously can’t wait to see how these mature and age over the next year or two.

Due to my limited descriptive capabilities, the best I can do to sum up Eagle Tree Spontaneous Ale is ‘a tart sour with some serious complexity’.  It’s something that’s definitely different, but definitely delicious.  If you like sours, it’s definitely worth a try.  If you want my honest opinion, look no further than the fact that I ordered six more within 24 hours of trying the first one.  It’s unique, it’s complex, and it’s tasty.  Enough said.