As fashionable as kettle sour ales — liberally infused with a
cornucopia of fruit puree — are in the craft beer world, they’re still not Nate
Kester’s cup of tea.
In fact,
Kester never brewed one in the eight years he was home brewing before coming
on board as head brewer at Irondequoit Beer Company. It’s become clear, however,
that they’re what the kids want, and Kester is happy to oblige.
“There’s a
lot of fun stuff you can do with these beers, they let you experiment a bit and
be creative,” Kester says
On Thursday,
February 6, Kester released his second sour out of Irondequoit’s five-barrel
brew house. Dubbed Permanent Waves, it’s a modest 4.5 percent sour brew flanked
by 125 pounds of blood orange and 150 pounds of mango puree. The result is a
sweet, tart and decisively citrusy beer that hints at a pleasantly upscale
variant of the fabled beverage from Beastie Boys lore, the Brass Monkey.
It’s a
fitting follow up to Kester’s first sour release, Berried Alive, a similarly-based
beer packed with blackberries, boysenberries, and blueberries.
“It’s just a
really good brunch beer,” Kester says of Permanent Waves. “It’s pretty light
and super easy-drinking.”
At
Irondequoit, a one-of-a-kind partnership with Ridge Donuts lets visitors pair
sweet with their sour. Irondequoit offers doughnut pairings with several of their
beers, and for Permanent Waves, the beloved I-Town pastry purveyors cooked up
an orange vanilla glazed doughnut available only at the brewery.
“People have
been going into the store and asking if they had the doughnut,” says Wendy Nolan
of the I-Square development the brewery is based in. “But nope, that’s just
here and just for us.”
While not
quite delicate, Permanent Waves is a beer hiding some subtle notes of zest and
earth underneath its fructose-laden exterior. It’s an approachable beer that
also throws a bone or two for craft beer nerds to chew on. That’s right in the
sweet spot for Kester.
“I think
that’s one of the hardest things — brewing a beer that both people who are way
into the craft scene and people who might not even like beer can pick up and
drink,” Kester says.
Gino
Fanelli is a CITY staff writer. He can be reached at gfanelli@rochester-citynews.com.
This article appears in Feb 12-18, 2020.
