Cheers!: Beet Crazy!

This weird beer has been clogging things up in the magic fridge for a couple months now. It just never seemed like the right time for a beet beer. Until now.

It’s called Spontanbeetroot, a lambic made with the underground-dwelling beet root, from the Danish brewer Mikkeller.

It pours a beautiful translucent red. Reminds me of an old Cal Tjader record on the Fantasy label.

There’s a spiciness to the nose, but nothing to indicate that beets were used in the making of this beer.

Surely, a certain earthiness in the taste will give the beet away, I thought as I went to take my first sip. Instead, I was kicked in the teeth by a primal blast of pure sour.

Wow! That’s one pucker-producing lambic. I fear I may be pickled at the end of this bottle – the sourest man alive.

As the beer warms to room temperature, after the initial pucker punch, the flavor builds to a tantalizing crescendo and rush that feels to me like the palate’s equivalent of making a high dive.

The beet’s natural earthiness comes from an organic compound known as geosmin. Mushrooms also have geosmin. I have a vague memory of a mushroom beer in my distant past. But since I didn’t get any earthiness in this beet beer, why even bring it up?

I think this odd beer is getting to me. I think I’m going beet crazy, so I finished the bottle while listening to Joe Jackson’s Beat Crazy (1980).