After almost 8 years of brewing sour beers, we don’t get surprised by too much. At this point, we generally understand what we’re going to get when we introduce our souring method to classic beer styles. We even generally have a target in mind when creating new styles, like the “fruit brut” Tropícal Brut. But every once in a while we get surprised by such a pleasing combination of flavors and it makes us fall in love all over again.
Lime in the Coconut is the new edition in Blue Owl Brewing’s series of Sour Fruited Milkshake IPAs that started with the crowd-fave, Tiki Hop Totem. These aren’t “milkshake IPAs” that are just sweet, lactose-driven fruit beers that lack the IPA part. These are sour, sweet, and bitter, brewed to make a dichotomy of resulting flavors that include sourness, fruit, and a particular fruity hop on one side combined with sweetness, fruitiness, and another particularly fruity hop on the other side. For example, Lime in the Coconut has Tahitian lime paired with an acidic beer base and Motueka hops for a lime zest flavor. On the other side, it also has coconut paired with creamy milk sugar and Sabro hops that give a distinct coconut hop flavor. The complexity is pulled all together and, weighing in at 8.3% ABV, it’s a powerful, tropical, vacation-in-a-can treat!
The surprising part in all of this is how well everything comes together so seamlessly like it was just meant to be. If the bitterness (30 IBUs), the sourness (85 SUs), or the sweetness/body (12P FG) were removed from the equation, the harmony would fall apart! Which begs the question, how do people even make good beer without acidity?!
