ST. JOHN’S, NL – YellowBelly Brewery has announced the release its latest seasonal beer.
Ginger Ale: A Feisty Red is a traditional Irish Red Ale brewed using wild yeasts along with YellowBelly’s house ale strain. It also contains no ginger despite the name, as explained by brewmaster Liam McKenna:
It arose from a discussion I was involved in recently about ‘terroir’ in brewing. The wild yeasts employed (two oviform little devils) were isolated from the general environment of our brewery. During this discussion, I thought it relevant to mention that all breweries (large or small) have a low but detectable background contamination. This was an effort to accentuate our particular ‘house’ character. The beer contains no ginger, instead, the name is a kind of veiled tribute to the red heads we know. I know many red heads object to the term ‘ginger’. I don’t really care about that. I also have known many red heads to have a ‘wild’ streak. Thus the name.
McKenna also provides the following tasting notes for the beer:
Quite a complex beer. It is big and malty with a very long finish, bitter forward with malt lift toward the end. Lightly carbonated and heavy in body. Notes of burnt, smoky toast, strawberry jam, coffee, chocolate, and leather. Deep garnet/ruby in colour, it is presented mit hefe. The wild yeasts employed lend some acidity and also notes of clove and banana. It will migrate in the bottle due to the continuing activity of the yeast.
YellowBelly Ginger Ale is available now while supplies last on draught at the brewpub, and in 1 litre swing-top bottles at the brewery store and select NLC stores.
I have to say, this is one of the more bazar marketing/naming strategies I’ve seen. I really enjoyed the beer, but from the bottle I had no idea it was styled after an American Wild Red Ale rather than a Ginger Ale. For the former style it works (I almost got a saison yeast taste from it), but it seems to imply that it’s of the latter style from everything I could see when drinking it. I really like the idea and execution of the beer, but the marketing is a bit meta and, without a style listed on the bottle (or even a note about their goals or where they are trying to break from a style) it’s a bit of a marketing flop. Still, nice to see something different in the Newfoundland market!