Sour, tart Agrarian Farms Brewing has just the change of pace you need for summer

Summer finally hit in Alaska this week, and although I’m not particularly seasonally oriented to beers – I can drink a stout in the desert and a pale lager in the arctic, beer is beer, after all – I really started to crave something lighter. Last Tuesday’s heat about took me by surprise and since I was getting ready to head out into the woods for a week and had friends from Phoenix in tow, I was really craving something lighter than what my garage beer refrigerator was giving up.

My tastes do change, but not on a whim. I’m currently back on an IPA bender. I’ve been on and off IPAS for a couple of years now like a bad habit that I just can’t shake. Yeah, I know; a lot of you readers are probably rolling your eyes with disdain. Many of my beer drinking friends are telling me they’re tired with the style. Even my friends from Phoenix took note. “What’s with all the goddamned IPA’s all over the west coast and up here?” asked my buddy Lynn.

They got off the plane and we found ourselves in a booth at the midtown Moose’s Tooth Pub and Pizzeria. His son in law, Greg, did a quick read of both the seasonal rotating tap menu and the flagship beer menu and came to a similar conclusion. “Jeez, about half of the beer on this menu is IPA,” he said. Quite jokingly I told them to go back to Phoenix and find something a little more watered down.

Still, knowing I had some hard work ahead cutting down trees on my lot with these two guys in tow, my standard stash of IPA’s APA’s and smoked porters would still find a welcome place in my cooler, but I knew that something quenching would be welcome after a hard day’s work.

La Bodega, my favorite liquor store, always has the answer. “Have you tried the new beers from Agrarian Hop Farm Ales out of Eugene,” asked the store keep? I had not, and into my basket it went, with some other tried and true lighter beers including local selections from Alaskan, Midnight Sun and Bearpaw River Brewing Companies to name a few of my snags that sweltering afternoon.

New beers are always fun for me regardless of the style. There’s something about new discoveries that makes beer drinking so much fun. Alaskans have ragingly curious palates which creates a robust market for craft beer from all over the nation and the world. I’m pretty certain that if I went out and sourced a new beer every day of the year, I’d run out of days before I ran out of new beer. I’m a pretty happy camper up here.

Agrarian Ales Brewing Company is smack dab in the center of Oregon’s Willamette Valley and as the name might imply, 100 percent of the hops used in the brewery’s dozen or so rotating beers. including some with alluring names like Barrels of Passion, Fairy Serum, Passionflower and Fog on the Mountain, to name a few. Yes, that sounds very Oregonan-ish to me. Agrarian prides itself on “organic, holistic, sustainable brewing,” and I love the fact that the brewery sources most of its ingredients from within 50 miles of the brewery to produce a series of beers with “intentional variation.” So far we’re only getting two of them in Alaska, but after my first experience with those, I’m ready for more.

I picked up my two Agrarian beers from Bodega and the labels were fanciful enough that I wasn’t going to wait to get all the way down to my mining camp in Hope to check them out. I’d just finished mowing my hell’s half acre of a weed patch that mimics my neighbor’s greener lawn, it was hotter than fuck, and I really needed something quenching. I popped the top on the 16-ounce brown stubby bottle of Agrarian’s Field Bier and decanted it into a goblet to check it out.

The label highlighted my upcoming adventure and actually put a pretty good spin on what Agrarian Brewing’s all about. The brewery’s mantra seems to be “We grow beer on our farm.” I like that; it’s a nice way to think about organic beer. About Field Bier, the label reads “Field bier defines our sense of place out in the countryside doing what we do. From our farmhouse brewery to our field-to-table kitchen, to our hop and vegetable farm, we are all farmhands turning the cogs of this unforgettable experience. Intentionally created as a simple, defining beer for inspiring reflection after a day of working in your field, Field Bier is: organic Belgian pilsner malt, French saison yeast, Agrarian nugget hops and fresh well water."

The beer pours hazy, light orange from the stubby 16-ounce bottle to the glass and rocks up a nice frothy white head that sticks around for the majority of the sample. Right off the bat I was impressed by the slightly earthy, but spicy nose in this one and pulling it into my schnauz, I knew I was in for a treat. Light grain underpinnings push out from under the spicy element in the nose and underscore the zestier elements in the beer.

The airy, dancing carbonation hits my palate first, followed by a totally quenching lightly tart bite. The light pilsner malt is easy enough to find in this gem but it’s the Belgian-esque yeast-inspired spiciness that really brings the beer to life for me. Scant, lightly floral hops add to the mix, but not obtrusively in the purposely light summer sipper. A fresh yeasty element brings up the middle of the sip and I get a lightly bready essence in the middle as well.

At 5 percent alcohol by volume, this one’s so easy drinking, it’s seasonable and I knew I should have bought more.

Agrarian’s Kettle Sour Persephone Ale made with red plums is singularly one of the best beers I’ve had so far this season. The beer is lively; prying off the cap from the 16-ounce bottle surprises me with an explosive pop. My noses is greeted with a solid, defining sourness from this hazy, solid orange beer which – like the Field Bier – rocks up a pretty nice head. Everything comes together in the sniff; the sourness doesn’t quite obscure the malt profile and just a hint of hops push out from underneath the foamy topper. I can just get a hint of the plums in the aroma, but I have to poke around for it for a little bit.

This beer moves toward the intensely sour side of things, but that’s by design and it works so very well in this highly carbonated, very buoyant beer that seems to float across my palate. The sourness doesn’t quite mask the malt basement in this beer, but it wouldn’t matter anyway. The plum essence is noticeable but not defining; I sense it more than I taste the flavor; I taste the plum’s skin more than the fruit itself, but this is no defect.

If you want something both quenching and puckering, this is your beer. Another sessionable beer at 5% alcohol by volume, this beer’s as crisp as an early morning on a late fall day, and that’s welcoming when the mercury pushed the temperature into the 80’s in my back yard.

My whole pint went down in a flash and again, I was disappointed that I didn’t buy more. The Brown Jug Warehouse and Gold Rush Liquor are conveniently on the way out of town for me, and I penciled in one of the two as my last stop before hitting the road for four more apiece of each of these excellent beers that are best consumed very cold and fresh. Even if you don’t think you care for tart or sour beers, these two are worthy of your palate on our scarce dog days of summer here in Alaska.