The first time I tasted The Pit & The Pendulum, SweetWater’s new cork-and-caged brettanomyces beer with peaches, it was at a little media gathering and we mulled over other potential Edgar Allen Poe-inspired beer names that the brewery might be able to use in the future. You know, “Raven Black IPA.” “The Tell-Tale Tart.” Or my personal favorite, “Cask of Amontillado-aged Imperial Stout.” Pointless, yes, but you gotta admit there’s a lot of source material there.
But I digress. Pit & The Pendulum is one of SweetWater’s first releases since acquiring a cork-and-cage bottle filler from Brooklyn Brewing, and the brewery is looking at the series as a chance to experiment with more eclectic, limited styles. It’s a Belgian ale of the unspecified sort, fermented with a traditional Belgian ale yeast before then being inoculated and aged on a bunch of fresh Georgia peach puree. Inquiring about the quantity, it works out to roughly a pound per gallon of peaches, which is, suffice to say, a bunch of peaches.
On the nose, this beer displays a lot of its Belgian yeast characteristics, along with some of the brettanomyces influences. Funk is light but detectable, with a bit of barnyard aromatics but lots of Belgian spice as well as some fruity esters—more “farmhouse ale” than “American wild ale.” The peaches are there too, but the peach aromatics are well-balanced with the spice and don’t really explode out of the glass.