Keller Door
Nitro Pavlova Ale
4 Pines
Once upon a time, O Best Beloved, there was a rather plain beer. It tasted as beers usually do – it was cold and gold, it had hops in drops, some fizz in his biz and was malty, but faulty.
One day it looked about it at all the other beers and realized that it was too plain. “How do I stand out on shelves groaning with chocolatey, sour, champagney, fruity, pastry-y, hopped-to-the-gills, smoked-to-the-hills, brewed-for-thrills beers there are out there?”
So it went to the creamy beers, and asked them what they had that it lacked. “Why, we have lactose!” They replied. “It is the very essence of cream!” “Not only so” said a Hi-ber-ni-an beer. “Some of us have nitrogen instead of CO2. This is what makes us so gentle on the palate.” So it thanked them, and gathered some lactose and some nitrogen, and went along its way.
Soon it came to the fruity beers and asked them what they had that it lacked. “Why” cried they “we are brewed with fruit, and as a result, are inherently fruity”. “Not only so” said a New World beer. “Some of us are brewed with hops with big fruity characteristics, and this is what makes us taste so delightfully tropical.” (In truth, O Best Beloved, these very hoppy New World beers looked rather down their noses at the beers of the Old World.) So it thanked them, and gathered up some passionfruit, kiwis and strawberries, as well as some juicy hops and went along its way.
And so, O Best Beloved, it took all these things home and fashioned them all into a splendid-looking cape, leaving not a drop, nor a crumb to bother the rhinoceros that wandered in from time to time from the Altogether Uninhabited Interior, and looked at itself in a mirror.
It had the fruit, and it had the beeriness, and it had the sweetness, and it had the creaminess, but O! Best, Beloved, it didn’t quite fit! The balance was just a little off. Even though it had no fizz, it still managed a rich mouthfeel from its nitro and its lactose. But it was a touch too sweet, though perhaps not so much as to be cloying. It was fruity, but a touch generically so – though the passionfruit and the strawberry did shine through in patches. The bitterness that lingered suggested resiny extracts of hops, or concentrated juices instead of fruits.
As it looked at itself in the mirror it realised, that underneath all the pomp and splendour, it was just a Kolsch dressed in fine but inharmonious clothing. “Sometimes” it said to itself “it is a grand thing to shoot for the stars, but it is also ok to simply brew something modest and elegant.”
And that is how the 4 Pines got its Pavlova.
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