Okinawa Sour Blonde Ale by Temple Brewing Co

This week’s beer comes from Temple Brewing in Brunswick East in the inner suburbs of Melbourne and is the first sour for the blog, Okinawa Sour Blonde Ale.

First things first, sours are obviously not everybody’s cup of tea (to use a slightly confusing and probably only vaguely applicable metaphor).  I certainly don’t love them all.  I’d certainly go so far to say I dislike more sours than I enjoy.  But this is most definitely one that I very much enjoy.

This beer is flavoured with the Shikuwasa fruit.  After a little bit of googling/can reading, it turns out a Shikuwasa fruit is a citrus fruit from Okinawa that looks a bit like a lumpy lime with big seeds and orangier flesh.  It’s an appropriately obscure (and slightly hipster-y) ingredient for a craft beer, but it absolutely works.

The beer is a lovely soft gold in colour (as you would expect from a blonde ale) with a tart citrus aroma (as you’d expect from a sour).  But most importantly it just tastes really really good. 

I might be not be the best judge of a sour, but I really like this beer because it still tastes like a beer, but with a sour kick.  Personally (and this may be just me) sour beers often almost don’t even taste like a beer at all. They’re almost like a new and separate drink that just isn’t generally my favourite. 

But this beer is a blonde that tastes like a beer (a blonde ale to be specific) that takes the sour citrus tinge that you often find in hoppy beers (not that this beer is very hoppy at all) and kicks it up a notch via strategic Shikuwasa usage.

So even if you’re not usually into sour beers, or the idea of a sour beer just sounds like a step too far, I reckon this would be an excellent one to tip your toe into (figuratively, that is). The Okinawa sour is a delicious sour even for people who don’t like sours.