Caesurians,
I had a dream a while ago. I was explaining some complex technical thing, and was doing it in my native Kazakh. I had a lot of trouble finding the rights words, without retreating to English terms. Eventually, I gave up — I switched to English, words came easily and sentenced formed naturally. It felt like a relief.
As it often happens in dreams, there was an unexpected turn. One of people I was talking to was my father. As I was switching from Kazakh to English, I watched his face to change from excitement to disappointment. I think it somehow relates to the fact that in our family chat group, he is the only one that consistently tries to reply in our language. Curious, what does this dream tell about my (ethnic) identity? Is there a family of unresolved major issues, prosperously living and breeding in the hidden depths of my subconsciousness, birthing the third generation of little cute minor issue kids?
Anyways. Sour beers, right.
I learned that beers can be sour and tasty last year, when we traveling to Copenhagen with one of my dearest friends. As always being amateur in everything I do in life, I had no idea that such thing exist.
Sour beers are also known as wild or funky beers and rightfully so. They are born out of wild experimentations by the masterminds of of craft brewing, that carefully select a roster of ingredients needed to produce surprising and delicious taste palettes. To my limited knowledge, sour beers are brewed using wild yeast strains that give it a tart, sour flavor and on the top of that, they add something as unexpected as coffee, which may seem like overkill, but in reality, it can create quite good balance of acidity, bitterness, and sweetness.
The best three sour beers I tried so far:
Canadian Breakfast Sour, by Hungarian craft beer brewery Horizon. The beer is brewed with yoghurt, chocolate, coffee, raspberry, blackberry and blueberry. Wild. And it tastes accordingly, but in a good way — it is sour, it is a bit milky, but also sweet. It’s good, really. Most of the time, you can order it in majority of Budapest’s craft places, but I usually get a can in Beerselection and Crafty Bar.
Berlin Jam by German brewery BRLO. It is unapologetically sour, but has a bit of strawberry added to the mix. I tried this one on my recent trip to Berlin, where I discovered this very nice bar called Kaschk by BRLO. They have really good snacks, too — try their BBQ nuts if you want to visit.
Coffee Sour by Denmark’s Taphouse. It is exactly what it is — a sour beer fermented with coffee beans. This was my first love and to this day, still is — I am still searching for a beer that can match it. It tastes like a cold coffee AND it tastes like a sour beer — I do not know how else to describe it — it is a mix of confusion, surprise and caffeinated excitement. Numero uno for me. Love it. You will too.
Here you go. Let me know if you love or hate sour beers, or if you visit any cool places that serve them.
In other news, life is just being a life. I did some travel (Nice in France just exceeded all expectations), rided some extreme-ish attractions in Vienna, cried a little during my *forced* commute to the office on the first day after the vacation. Sometimes I have this feeling of wanting to do some major intellectual work, that would challenge me and require me to spend hours and hours on researching and writing. And then, I feel like doing nothing, just existing, playing Japanese video games (like Yakuza, Judgement or Ni No Kuni) and binge-watching Netflix shows (The Diplomat and Giri/Haji are really good). Other times, I feel like going for a run.
And sometimes, I fee like writing this newsletter.
So, all in all — ups and downs, business as usual.
This is Caesura, and I’m Adil. I am wishing you the very best of what this weekend, and the summer, has to offer.
Thanks for reading and see ya!
Adil