Jester King RU-55

Jester King RU-55 is an American Wild Ale. This farmhouse style sour red ale is aged in oak barrels, and fermented with Farmhouse Yeast, Wild Yeast from the Texas Hill Country, Brettanomyces Yeast, Souring Bacteria. I got this as a part of a trade well over a year (maybe even two years) ago and have been holding on to it for no particular reason.

The pour is a muddy reddish brown, with very little head. The carbonation is in fact very low, almost missing with this beer. Not sure if that was a side affect of aging or if the bottle conditioning didn’t go quite as planned. I was surprised by this though, with all that yeast in there I was expecting something closer to a gusher. This is a complex tasting beer. It starts dry and fruity with notes of sour grapes, sour apple, lactic sourness. The major flavor in this is coming from the wood and farmhouse yeast though. Very musty with layers of wet wood and barnyard funk. A little tart cherry comes into play on the dry finish.

I wasn’t so sure about this beer at first, but I really got into this as it warmed up and some of the more abrasive flavors began to blend with the rest of the beer.