Amalgam Brewing Friends With Blendefits: Young Spontaneous Beer
What the brewers say
Amalgam and Primitive lovingly teamed up to create Friends With Blendefits, an expressive yet balanced blend of beers, bottle conditioned on a variety of priming sugars. Our final split of this release was conditioned with Primitive’s four-month-young spontaneous beer.
What our panel thought
Real-lemon-grapefruit nose, complete with flesh, pith, and peel, plus barnyard, grain, and earthy log-cabin floor. Lemon-lime flavors—lively, prickly, light, with a wonderful tart and juicy stripe enmeshed in dusty gauze. Softness of earthy bitterness allows restrained acidity to shine. Balance leans toward funk. Finishes dry, leaving a splintered memory of that acidity, so you have to go back to the well. Convincing.
What our editors thought
Doughy lemon-tangerine aroma like a citrus sugar cookie is backed by a pale linen note, for a push-pull of engagement and detachment. The flavor is an embrace of subtlety and understatement, quiet yet self-assured, simultaneously rounded with present malt yet lean and light as it quickly disappears from the tongue. The low acidity lets the light mineral funk shine through, and a slight honey sweetness appears toward the finish to soften the light edge they create. Considered as a whole, it's a remarkable work—delicate but deep with an interplay of acid, funk, and malt that tell a considerable story as they unfold.
