Beery Christmas Day 17: La Débauche Berliner-Tana

La Débauche Berliner-Tana: Berlin via Antananarivo...

Newcomers to Beery Christmas, based in the southern French city of Angouleme, the highly esteemed La Débauche infused their brewing with a very French sense of style from the word go. As famous for their elegantly designed labels as their brewing, this remarkable Craft Brewery has successfully married high-art with quality beer.

Skillfully brewing in a range of styles, from light, fresh Pale Ales and Craft Pilsners to deep, dark gourmet Barrel-Aged Imperial Stouts - not forgetting some truly memorable, if leftfield beers brewed with cucumber or carrot juice - whatever La Débauche turns its hand to, you can be sure of a truly original approach to brewing

La Débauche Berliner-Tana

Today we’re taking you on a trip to the South of France via Berlin and Madagascar. This crazy route is the brainchild of France’s La Débauche and their Berlin-Tana – a Berliner Weisse infused with Madagascan vanilla.

Another challenging beer with a sour kick, Berliner Weiss is all about the lactic yeast. The hazy gold body and puffy white meringue head hide fresh wheat bread malts and sharp sour cream scents that evoke citrusy froghurt.

Cool and fresh, the body shows off typical wheat smoothness with fine champagne bubbles and lactic acidity to prickle your tongue as a perfect counterpoint. This soft-sharp contrast is smoothed by soft vanilla that gives the fruity wheat a creaminess that lingers on the tongue for a long lemon parfait finish.

Berliner Weisse: sharp as a tack

Sharp, sour German Berliner Weisse is part of the Sour Ale family. Like its Sour Ale sisters, Berliner Weisse is traditionally brewed with a blend of Lager yeast and bottle-conditioned with lactobacillus bacteria to give it that unmistakable zinginess.

As the name suggests, the style as we know it originated in Berlin nearly 500 years ago as a variant of an earlier recipe from Hamburg.

You say weisse, I say wheat…

The weisse in the name refers to wheat, and Berliner Weisse beers are typically brewed with between 25 and 50% wheat to give a classic German wheatbeer breadiness to the brew.

Napoleon Bonaparte famously described Berliner Weiss as the Champagne of the North! If it's good enough for history's greatest vertically-challenged military strategist with an irrational fear of cats, then it's good enough for Beery Christmas!