ITHACA BRUTE, YOU SILLY SAVAGE

Golden. Sour. Strong. Different. These are words one might use to describe ITHACA BRUTE, another one of those 100-best-beers on the Beer Advocate list that Hedonist Beer Jive got a chance to try recently. ITHACA BREWING, as I've come to find out, have a whole corral full of big beers in big bottles with big price tags; I saw a bunch of them on my trip to New York last week, and pulling five of them off the shelves would be roughly the financial equivalent of buying the Top 75 games in iTunes for your iPhone. Except you'd get to consume those for a couple years.

In any event, I knew I couldn't finish this enormo bottle on my own, but d*** it, I came pretty close. ITHACA BRUTE, a golden sour ale brewed with three different champagne yeasts, is a very effervescent and bubbling sort of beer, one with a decided banyard funk to it. That would be those "brettanomyces" we've heard so much about. It's a really dry and tart beer, not althogether unenjoyable, but one that I felt I had to work at a little. There are sour ales that just roll off the tongue and lead to instant conversion for the uninitiated; I can't say this would be one of them - Top 100 slot or no. 6.5/10.