From the Beer Writer: When the team at Del Mar brewpub Viewpoint Brewing fell behind on their plan to brew a beer in honor of Oktoberfest, they picked themselves up and focused on a celebratory period they were plenty ahead of, the holidays. When brainstorming on an ingredient that would be appropriate from Thanksgiving through Christmas, they decided on the humble yet flavorful cranberry. But rather than make some flimsy, indiscernible “fruit beer”, they aimed to make something complex and unique, selecting a Belgian-style farmhouse ale as the base style and augmenting it with the fruit of the bog. Enter the hilariously named Viewpoint Cranbarely Sauced. With a French saison yeast strain bringing in huge floral, citrus fruit character in the bouquet and palate, this 7% alcohol-by-volume beer comes across tasting like blood orange with hints of anise and lemon thyme in the front, cranberries (sans their inherent tartness) in the middle, with a bone-dry finish leaving a lasting grapefruit pith bitterness in its wake. It’s a very interesting beer that is perfectly suited for the holiday season and unlike anything else in San Diego County.
From the Brewers: “The idea came about while (Viewpoint founder) Charles Koll was talking to chef Nathan Lingle from L’Auberge about the holidays just before San Diego Beer Week. We were hoping to do a collaboration with him for our grand opening but the timing didn’t work out, so we decided to collaborate on a beer for the holidays. While talking about the many different flavors that reminded us of the holidays, cranberry was universal. Charles and I talked about using our French-saison recipe because it has earthy pepper notes that would complement the tartness of cranberries. To add to the overall balance of the beer, we added some Red X malt to the base recipe for more sweetness and a little darker color. Chef Nathan came in to brew the beer with us and we discussed the best way to make the cranberry sauce. Because we added sweetness with the grain bill, no sugar was used while making the sauce. Instead, Nathan made a fennel stock and that was the liquid used to reduce the fresh and dried cranberries. We used about 10 gallons of the cranberry sauce and later added fennel pollen for aromatics, like a dry-hop addition. The Cranbarely Sauced French saison is beer-forward with the cranberry coming at the finish. The fennel is sudden and comes more on the nose. The goal was to keep beer in the foreground and have the other flavors play a complementary role.”—Moe Katomski, Head Brewer, Viewpoint Brewing Company