Sour Kriek II
Central City Brewers + Distillers

Bottle: Poured a deep reddish color ale with a large off-white foamy head with good retention and light lacing. Aroma of oak and cherry tart notes with some light acidic notes is pleasant. Taste is a mix of cherry and oak flavours with some tart notes with some acidic notes also perceptible and some vinous notes in the aftertaste. Body is full for style with good carbonation. Enjoyable but lacking a little bit of balance with too much tartness.

 

Deep reddish brown, pours a nice tan head but there's no retention or lace.

Aroma of cherries, oak, leather and sherry.

Pleasant sourness, with some depth to the funk. Cherry pie, leather, tannins (oak and wine?), hints of vinegar and tobacco. Great sweet/tart/alcohol balance.

Great body with a light residual sweetness, balanced acidity and a slightly drying alcohol finish.

Poured a nice ruby red, nose was barnyard funk, oak and sweet cherries. Flavour profile was nicely balanced with the sauvignon flavours and barrel aging coming through Iceland alongside sweet candied cherries and a nice sour backbone. Fantastic brew indeed.

 

750ml bottle, aged for two years in Cabernet Sauvignon barrels, and also in French oak foeders. And infused with cherries, duh!

This beer pours a clear, dark red-brick brown colour, with one finger of weakly foamy, and mostly just bubbly tan head, which leaves but a few wayward specks of remote islet lace around the glass as it quickly dissolves.

It smells of musty and tart cherries, edgy and mildly funky yeast, raspberry-tinged red wine vinegar, damp wood, a hint of wet ashiness, bready and lightly toasted caramel malt, and an indistinct earthy and herbal green bitterness. The taste is more sour wild cherries steeping in red balsamic vinegar, roasted pale and caramel malt, musty funk, dead yeast, wet barrel staves, ephemeral smoke, a very tame leafy and earthy hoppiness, and just a soupcon of the coming alcohol horde.

The bubbles are pretty low-key in their barely there frothiness, the body a decent medium weight, and actually more or less smooth, with a minor airy creaminess evolving as things warm up a tad. It finishes off-dry, the malt and fruity side of the cherries helping to combat a lingering tart/sour/woody cabal.

Overall, this is a fairly well-made, big, sour, and Kriek-esque brew - it really leans heavily towards Flanders Red Ale territory at times (excepting the elevated, and out-of-band ABV, of course). Lots of good stuff going on here, with the cherry and red wine essences dominating, but in a pleasant and benevolent enough manner.