Time for a Strawberry Wit, Custom-style
By Mark Tichenor and Bruce Lish.

The Tap and Mallet over on Gregory Street has had a house beer since it opened in 2007. Until now, that beer was McBane’s Best Bitter, classically profiled English-style ale.

With an eye to keeping things fresh, Tap owner Joe McBane decided to go further afield when envisioning the Best Bitter’s successor. He called the good people at Honeoye Falls’ Custom Brewcrafters and told them to get cracking on Mc Bane’s Strawberry Wit.

The new beer, released last Thursday, couldn’t be less English.

There’s nothing stodgy, upper-crusty, or reserved about the Strawberry Wit. It’s a Belgian-style witbier at its core: translucent pale yellow in color with a sweet estery finish that does a prickly dance on the tongue. The wheat malt and flaked oats used to brew it impart a light, quenching character.

“I worked with all traditional ingredients,” says brewer Jordan Sunseri. “Belgian pils malt, raw wheat, tettnang hops.” But the tradition pretty much ends with the addition of a ton of strawberries with a brewer’s curiosity on what was going to happen.

“We weren’t actually sure the strawberries would react. This is the most fruit we’ve ever put into a beer,” Sunseri explains. “We used no additives or enzymes, we just let the beer be what it decided to be.”

Oh, they reacted all right. The yeast gorged itself on the berries’ fermentable sugars, creating a flavor profile that’s surprisingly restrained for a beer with the name of a fruit in its title.

A hint of strawberry lingers in the aroma, and it’s not difficult to detect that well known fruit flavor in the finish, but instead of a cloying, sweet, overly fruited brew, the drinker discovers tartness, a dry complexity, with almost peach-like notes.

For a fruit beer, this is beyond the norm. Generally, brewers whack you in the tongue with flavor extracts and unfermented sugar. To find this beer so restrained is refreshing to say the least.

It also points to a bit of a sea change in how Custom Brewcrafters is doing business. The original business model of brewing individualized beers for bars and restaurants left the company with a middle-of-the-road portfolio of ambers and brown ales. While economically sound for a while, the brewery was eclipsed by those craft brewers that innovated and tried new things. It also left custom brewcrafters with an identity crisis.

“I always thought our beer line was neglected,” says Head Brewer Jason Fox, who relishes the freedom to explore, innovate, and do crazy one-off beers. Sipping a glass of the brand new (and very good) CB’s Hefe, Fox talks about his Signature series beers, bigger, badder, with more variety of flavor than CB’s is known for.

While Custom brewcrafters still makes the beers its customers signed up for, this new attention to the beer that wears the company’s own brand means the company recognizes the importance of beer lovers, not just beer consumers, in its future plans. “The only rule is it has to be fun.” Fox adds

A sunny day, the deck of the Tap and Mallet, and a cold glass of McBane’s Strawberry Wit definitely qualify.

Bruce is a certified beer judge and former commercial brewer. Mark owns a laptop and likes beer. For more on beer, check out the beercraft blog, updated regularly, at http://www.beercraftsite.com. Send your questions, suggestions, or comments to beercraft@rochester.rr.com.