Éphémère Sureau (Elderberry)

Éphémère Sureau is a fruited white ale; it is being evaluated against Category 29: Fruit and Vegetable Beer. For this style, I look for the fruit addition to be prominently featured, and to be balanced with a well-executed base beer.

The aroma of this beer includes a strong fresh-strawberry smell, with rich floral and honey overtones, a low orange and grapefruit undertone, and slight vanilla. There was no evident hop character in the aroma, allowing the base beer and fruit to shine. There was a low spiciness and low levels of rose-like esters. Overall, the aroma was very complex and enticing, though I wouldn’t have guessed that there were elderberries in this beer (and I work a lot with elderberries!)

The beer iteslf was an appealing reddish copper with a hint of purple. There was a slighltly-pink white head with moderate-to-low retention. The beer was quite hazy (appropriate for the style), and I found that the haziness added to its mystique.

In tasting the beer, I was first struck by a low sourness that dissipated quickly, then by a low hop bitterness that lingered. The fruit flavors were far weaker in the taste than in the aroma — I got low levels of strawberry and watermelon, and very low levels of orange. The finish was so clean that the beer nearly disappeared as soon as I tasted it — the base beer took perhaps too much of a back seat in this particular brew; the wheat and malt characteristics that I might expect were almost entirely absent, save for a generic very low sweetness. Overall, the aroma promised complexity and balance, but the flavor, in this bottle did not deliver — the beer seemed almost watered down.

The mouthfeel was pleasant — the beer had a medium body, moderate-to-low levels of carbonation, and no astringency. There was a sense of crispness to drinking this beer, like the feeling your mouth gets when drinking fruit punch on a hot day.

Overall, this is a refreshing beer with an outstanding appearance and aroma. In my particular bottle (which was tasted after having stored it for several weeks in a refrigerator), I wished for more flavor — I wanted more fruit and more base beer presence. A bolder base beer and a stronger elderberry flavor would have made this a truly exciting brew!