Friday, September 25, 2009

Victory Wilddevil: Houston Rodeo Beer


I've never had a beer brewed with pure Bret (a bacteria you normally want to keep out of beer). I must say that after getting a wine glass of this stuff last night in the form of Victory Wilddevil Ale. We had that bomber cooled down to 42 deg F. We were ready to rock and roll with some spicy spaghetti (seeing as how it's a Belgian IPA), and I was ready to pencil in a 5 Star.


I think I made it through about 3 tablespoons of this beer and I was done. It was bottle conditioned, so I knew it would be high carbonation, and it was. I was at a loss for words for how shocking this beer tasted. I later realized the answer: the Houston Rodeo. Every year for about a month Houston has the largest rodeo and livestock show in the world. It takes up all of Reliant Park including Reliant Stadium (Houston Texans home), the Astrodome, Reliant Arena, the Convention Center, and the entire parking lot. If you took all the cows, bulls, chickens, horses, hay, filth, turkey legs, day old bbq sauce, ferris wheels, game booths, and especially the dirt they put on the rodeo floor; stuff it all in a mash tun and soaked it in 140 deg water, added some British hops and fermented it, thats what this beer tastes like.
No rating as I know this is a new (to me) style and I'm still working on acquiring a taste for sour beers. But this makes those sour beers taste like Spaten Doppelbock. I love Victory and consider them a top 15 if not top 10 American brewery. What's bad is that I know they are going for a specific style and taste and probably hit it on the head, so God bless 'em.

1 comment:

HolzBrew said...

Odd coincidence, because I reviewed this libation last week: http://holzbrew.blogspot.com/2009/09/where-wild-things-are.html

You can check the review, but all in all it was good, but not amazing. Keep up the beer writing!