Scratch Brewing uses fermented acorns to impart a flavor of, as they say, oak, leather, madeira, prunes, and bourbon; it doesn’t all have to be hazy IPA’s with Citra, Mosaic, and (fill in the blank with some Australian variety).
The answer was obvious because it had been close at hand all along: beet syrups.
We get the essence of the taste of the tree without the tannins of the wood itself, and the bigness of the beer without the oiliness of a huge grain bill. We’re back to a syrup koan: the essence of the birch is kept, but the tricky business of the body is excluded.
The radical difference of flavor comes from the peculiar combination of honeys and the yeast used, both of which collaborate to produce the strange “quoted” sensation of the fruitiness.
Honeys, saps, and syrups lighten the body of a beer. Paradoxically, they prevent beer from getting syrupy and gelatinous.