Top Tastings 2008. A shorter version appeared on facebook January 2009.
ABV: 4.7%
Origin: Penjamo, Guanajuato, México
Website: www.tequilacorralejo.com.mx
Mexicana Potro
This beer, which claims to be a porter, split our tasting team down the middle when it popped up at the Tesco Drinks Awards judging in 2008. Although a blind tasting, the stylish and distinctive blue bottle was a giveaway. There’s a lot of contradictory stuff on the web about where it comes from, but it appears to be a product of Cerveceria Mexicana, a brewing sideline to a tequila producer at Hacienda Corralejo in the central Mexican state of Guanajuato.
If you’re expecting a straight porter you’ll be surprised as there’s a presumably deliberate wild yeast streak of lambic-like sourness to this dark ruby-brown beer with its smooth fawn head. The sourness is softened by dark, slightly treacly malt and a genuinely porterish touch of roast. There are more tart notes in the finish with chocolate and a scattering of hops, fruit and smoke.
Sourness would of course quite likely have been a characteristic of historic porters with their long maturation in wooden vessels, but has largely been smoothed out in contemporary versions, so it’s surprising to see it cropping up again from such an unusual source. Unlikely to be to everyone’s taste, but I loved it.
Read more about this beer at ratebeer.com: http://www.ratebeer.com/beer/hacienda-cerveza-potro/34633/
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