Editor’s note: We are pleased to feature this year-long series highlighting the most unique seasonal offerings brewed up by the wizards at Crafty Bastard and available at the business’s original and/or West Knox locations. Articles are provided by Crafty’s Aaron McClain and (lightly) edited by BLANK. Cheers!
by Aaron McClain
“I’m impressed that you pulled it off, but who the hell would ever want to drink a pint of this?!” It was the spring of 2018, and the Big Ears festival was returning. As many of you may know, it is a music festival that is as bizarre as it is beloved. I reckoned that the throngs of people descending upon Knoxville from all over the world to immerse themselves in an aria of the avant-garde might also like a beer with some intrigue, as well. Enter our Salsa Verde Gose.
A blend of ingredients infused into a sour and salty gose yielded a beer that was, to some eyes, an unappetizing shade of murky green but one that was undeniably palatable, piquant and precisely what we wished to prescribe: salsa verde in a glass … but still beer! We released the beer during the festival while Captain Muchacho’s served tacos, and the combination was a hit. We have released this beer yearly, and while it isn’t our fastest seller, we have people who eagerly anticipate its return every year.
That’s where I thought my interaction with salsa-inspired beers would end – until Matthew Bolt, a green-thumbed friend of mine, walked into Crafty, that is. He presented me with bags upon bags of tomatillos, the constituent ingredient of many salsa verdes, and I of course immediately thought of using them to put a local spin on our yearly Salsa Verde Gose. However, I instead decided I would like to use this local bounty in a more expressive manner.
It seemed to be a bit of a waste to amalgamate this homegrown harvest with salt, peppers and an assortment of other ingredients to create a sudsy spin on a taco topping. How was I to utilize this bounty without simply making a hot sauce beer? There were several options that I pondered, but after careful consideration, I decided aging them in a barrel-aged sour was the most reasonable remedy for my conundrum.
Tomatillos are normally paired with acidic ingredients in culinary applications. Vinegar, lime, lemon etc. all are used to enhance the fruitiness and subdue the vegetal notes that are both inherent to tomatillos. The complex and multi-faceted acidity found only in barrel-aged sours, not quick-turn goses, seemed to be a perfect backdrop to allow the nuanced nature of these fickle fruits to shine through. (Many “sours” you see at breweries are quick-turn kettle sours that are good bases for adding all kinds of juices and flavorings, but they do not provide the depth and complexity of acidity and flavor that a true barrel-aged sour does.) I also thought the extended aging of the fruit that a barrel-aged sour provides would allow for an intricacy and depth of flavor to develop with time.
And so I waited. And waited and waited and … well, I’ll just show you my notes:
04/14/2021 – Added 15# of tomatillo to 15 gallons of a blend of barrels 18 and 20
07/06/2021 – pH 2.95, clean, acidic, no identifiable tomatillo notes
And every other tasting after July was frighteningly flaccid. Nothing was wrong with the beer, but there was simply no character from the fruit coming through. I considered blending it with other beers or adding chili peppers to it, but fortunately I kinda forgot about it. Finally, in March 2022, I pulled a sample from FK8 (where the tomatillos had been aging for nearly a year) and was astounded:
03/21/2022 – Amazing! Notes of cotton candy, bright and pleasantly ambiguous fruitiness with a drying, slightly spicy finish. Acidity is in perfect balance with the fruit and barrel character. Keg it!
Every Monday, we release a sour from our House of Funk program at the downtown location. The release of our Forager Tomatillo Sour is especially important because it is happening during Knoxville Craft Beer Week. There is a slew of events being held at Knoxville-area breweries May 20-29, and I strongly encourage anyone interested in supporting local businesses, drinking good beer and interacting with the community to go to knoxvillecraftbeerweek.com for a full list of events. There has been such a week for many years now, and just like many other events, it was negatively affected by COVID. This year, it is back in full force and – just like the tomatillo sour – worth waiting for.
