Brewery: The Collective Brewing Project
Beer: Dream Folk
Style: American Wild Ale
ABV: 5.7%
Character: Inoculated in their American oak foeder and barrel aged. This golden ale is fermented with their house mixed culture of brettanomyces, wild yeast, lactobacillus, and pediococcus. Brewed with orange zest and vanilla bean.
Ratings: BA: 4.39/5 | Untappd: 4.23/5
Metal Connection: TIAMAT – In a Dream
BeerMetalDude Rating: 5/5
One of the hottest little breweries from Fort Worth, Texas is The Collective Brewing Project. These guys focus on mostly sour beers with the use of alternative fermentation, and they love using wood barrels and adding some pretty interesting ingredients to their beers. I am happy that these beers are distributed to my beloved San Antonio, TX, so I can pick them up at anytime I want (or can afford!)
One of the main things that drew my attention was the label of this beer. This one is very artsy, and the use of the colors of mostly purple, and gold really help this label pop out. There is a large purple whale with a glowing all seeing eye on it’s side, which seems to be floating in the night sky above some purple leafless trees. There is a hot air balloon basket attached to the whale with two people hanging on the chained anchor. Really strange and awesome.
Using a tulip style glass, Dream Folk poured a golden color, which was topped with a third of an inch white bubbly head. The head disappeared rather quickly to absolutely nothing left on top of the beer. Obviously, there was no lacing. The glass did have some chill haze on there, giving a slight hazy appearance to the beer at first, but as the beer sat and warmed up, it cleared up perfectly.
The aroma was tart and sour with an earthy funk. There was definitely oak wood from the barrel present in the nose along with citrus orange, vanilla bean which gave off an aroma of a dreamsicle. There was a slight sweet marshmallow or cream presence, earthiness and floral, and some bready malts.
As with a lot of sour beers the tart sour funkiness dominates the palate from start to finish. The really enjoyable part of this beer was that all the other characters came to play as well. Oak wood, citrus orange zest and vanilla bean made up the body. Again, this made this beer taste like a dreamsicle, along with hints of sweet marshmallow or cream. Earthy and floral notes, along with bready malts rounded off the taste of Dream Folk. There was even a strange taste that reminded me of salt in there. The aftertaste was all dreamsicle and sour tartness.
This beer had a medium body, with a very tart yet slightly creamy mouthfeel. This one even hurt the teeth, and quickly dried out my mouth on the finish.
Overall , I will have to say this… God Damn Mother Fuckin’ amazing beer! I loved the fact that these guys pulled off a beer that is both sweet and sour. The fact that this beer tastes like a dreamsicle within the tart sour funkiness from their mixed culture that they ferment their beers with. Imagine taking a dreamsicle and dipping it in sour pickle juice, and imagine that being simply fucking amazing, and you have yourself Dream Folk.
Metal Connection: 1992 was around the time I was getting into the Underground Metal scene. I remember shopping locally at small local record store like Hogwild Records or Flip Side Record Parlor for my Metal fix. This was the year that the Death/Doom Metallers from Sweden known as Tiamat released their third full length album, Clouds. I was so blown away by this album. It was so slow, eerie, soulful, and just down right epic and brutal. The opening track, “In a Dream” is the song I chose for this beer’s Metal Connection. I slowly sipped this beer, letting it warm up to expose all of it’s beautiful flavors. Right around the 4:0o mark of the song, when it’s gets faster and the guitar leads kicked in, the beer was hitting me a bit, so when it went back to the Doom-like slow paced Metal to end the song, I was ready to pound some ore beers to help me sleep and get into my own dreams.
Beer Metal Media 