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Fair Isle Tove

Tasted 2026-09-26 · isolate: started

Tove bottle, Fair Isle: dark bottle with a black label showing a line drawing of a wooded island under a full moon above wavy water lines, text reading Fair Isle, Tove, oak-aged ale refermented with blackberries, 12.7 fl oz, Seattle, WA Tove, Fair Isle: oak-aged ale refermented with blackberries (from the label).

Clear, deep ruby-red beer in a stemmed tulip glass decorated with black running figures, with a thick white head In the glass.

Impression

Excellent.

This is the kind of beer I will use to convince a wine connoisseur about the wonders of properly made mixed fermentation beers, 5 stars in my book.

I thought this beer was very well balanced, with a slight tannic backbone and quite a bit of oak. Given what I had read on the label and the berries addition, I was bracing myself for quite a bit of acidity, but instead I got mild acidity that just lifted this beer. If I had to name what made this beer special, it was the acidity balance and how it complemented the overall beer instead of imposing itself.

The bugs

From what I have read, the brewer pitches a blend containing all bugs in primary, and through the process they manage the natural tendency for cultures to drift towards acidity.

Decision

Started. I think it is worth trying to recover some of these organisms, with my eye on the Saccharomyces strain(s) and Lactobacillus, especially considering I do not currently have any Lactobacillus in the bank I am satisfied with.