Hoppy Friday! 🍻 Time to open our first homebrewed Fruited Sour Ale. This is seasoned with strawberry and rhubarb. The beer looks turbid, attractively sludgy 😅 with a faint strawberry juice tint. And again, like previously, I won't reduce my rating because of the appearance since it's understandable that the beer looks darker than it should as the base is from the second runnings of Sahti wort. Carbonation is a bit tame, yet quite decent. A moussy, latte-hued head forms on the top and falls short of one finger. The foamy lid melts soon to a neat lace ring circling the surface and leaves a few tiny splashes on the glass. Alright. Now I raise the glass up to my nose and inhale: I'm relieved as I'm not soaked with the smell of sludge! Quite the opposite actually. I find light-sour rhubarb and an interesting aroma of passionfruit. Passionfruit is not even an ingredient to this beer... Strawberry is also there although rather subdued in the background. I'm also imagining citrusy elements but, after a second thought, they are not really there. Not bad. Now the gustatory triumph! Strawberry is very reasonable, not powerful but not meager either. Strawberry is quite challenging as its taste intensity is much lower than that of many other berries and fruits. Yet, the strawberry is depictable without any major effort. The phantom of passionfruit enters the room again although there should be no reason for it. Rhubarb balances nicely with strawberry. I was afraid that rhubarb could have actually overpowered strawberry but fortunately that isn't the case. Additionally, a bit of lemon zest and bitter orange peel accompany behind the corner. The elements are basically there. The problem, however, is that sourness should have been more pronounced. We managed to reach pH of 4.4 when our target was 3.5. Even 4.0 could have been fully satisfactory. 4.4 is at the edge of acceptable and surely gluggable to those who aren't that much for Sour Ales. A potential drop from 4.4 to 3.5 is huge as pH is a logarithmic scale. Anyway, 4.4 is what we now have to live with. The body is light. The same package of rhubarb, passionfruit and strawberry carries over to the finish. The citrusy touch is subtle. As if there was also a tad wheat malt but as a matter of fact there isn't. The aftertaste mashes fresh strawberries for the tastebuds over short to medium duration. The mouthfeel is light, a tad tart but barely slightly puckering as well as therefore a bit powerless. It's also quite juicy, nicely clean and balanced. Very summery and easily quaffable. Our first Fruited Sour Ale. Good start. We've learned that more is more. Next time double the punch and there we go!