Cheers! Journey Into the Tart of Darkness

“We penetrated deeper and deeper into the heart of darkness,” Marlow relating his story to the unnamed narrator in Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness.

How could Conrad not pop into your brain with a beer named Tart of Darkness?

And this beer from Bruery Terreux is just as unusual as Conrad’s strange journey into the corrupted soul of man.

This 6.6 percent sour beer is a traditional stout soured up. The beer ferments in oak barrels that had been used for other brews, such as The Bruery’s Black Tuesday, a bourbon barrel-aged imperial stout released on the last Tuesday of October, along with, the brewery says, “our special blend of souring bacterias and wild yeasts.”

Ooh, yeah, that is some special blend of souring agents!

Wow! My mouth is so happy right now I think it could smile all the way through Apocalypse Now.

By the way, Bruery Terreux is an offshoot of The Bruery of Orange County, Calif. Bruery Terreux is dedicated solely to sours, and if you check out their website (brueryterreux.com), you might pop a cork at the range of beers produced.

Tart of Darkness really is astounding. It seems alive in the glass, burbling with carbonation.

The deep darkness of stout is there, but nestled even deeper within the exquisite sourness.

This beer has your palate going off in all directions – wild sours with the bright tastes of tart cherries, raspberries and maybe gooseberries on the end competing for your attention with dark chocolate and coffee.

I say let it all hang out and jump right into this tart darkness. We can’t all be hollow men, penciling in our own pamphlets,

“Exterminate all the brutes!”

This strange, exotic, intoxicating liquor might have brought poor old Kurtz back from the brink, might have reminded him of his humanity and that “The mind of man is capable of anything – because everything is in it, all the past as well as the future.” 

Well, that’s how I feel about this excruciatingly delicious sour stout. Yum!

Ahhhh! The bomber bottle is empty! How did that happen?

“The horror! The horror!”