Sour. But not in the good way. (Photo via MK Heisler)

For all the hubbub surrounding Brewery Ommegang, I’m quite surprised that this is the first time I’ll be addressing any beer from the New York rarity. If you’re unfamiliar with the place, they specialize in bringing true, Belgian style ales to the United States. Sure, a few American breweries will toss out a tripel or a Belgian style IPA occasionally, but Ommegang only specializes in Belgians. I’ve said for quite sometime now that I’m not the biggest fan of Belgian style beers. I can find them a bit too fruity or boozy for my liking, and I’m often nonplussed by the massive presence of Belgians at local bars that couldn’t give a shit about quality beer. So I guess what I’m saying is: This is why I’ve avoided beer from Ommegang like the plague. But things are changing. I may be getting spoiled, but I’m tiring of the standard stouts and IPAs in great quantity here, so I’m trying  to branch out. Surely there are Belgians worthy of my verbosity, and maybe Ommegang could take me to the dark side. My current forays into sour ales from Jolly Pumpkin and others brought me to a perfect outlier on my beer screen: the Ommegang Bière de Mars, a Belgian amber with the famous Brettanomyces bruxellensis, a wild yeast known for adding a sour touch to brews.

Though I was somewhat skeptical about the style, I was excited to finally dig into an Ommegang beer, especially one with a touch of Brettanomyces. The beer poured a somewhat murky, golden-red amber color, without a ton of junk floating around like I expected. The head stuck around on the beer for centuries, and remained through the duration of the glass. The smell wasn’t overly astounding either, with just some soft hints of sweet fruit, maybe clove, and some light malt. I expected the taste to be like nothing else I’d ever had, with bursts of sour painted on a sweet amber profile, but I was tossed onto a pile of pillows lined with a subtle apple flavor lined with a muted malt backbone that falls away very delicately to a slightly sour profile. The longer the beer sat, the less I found within the flavor, as the beer actually became tamer as it warmed with a light sweetness and the blended sour flavor kicking around in spurts. Certainly not a stunning brew, but also one that was highly drinkable and enjoyable. In fact, my bottle was gone in virtually no time at all.

So my foray into a new style may not have gone as planned to begin with. I appreciate the effort on this one, and I still found it to be awfully drinkable and enjoyable, but for the price and hoopla, this wasn’t what I wanted. The flavor profiles are there, but if I’m going to buy a Warhol print for a hefty price, I better get something bigger than a 1″ x 1″ picture of the letter “X.”