Soproni Óvatos Duhaj Meggy Ale
Heineken Hungária Sörgyárak / Sopron Brewery

 

Poured from 500mL can into a wine glass. Best by 5/6/23.

Appearance: medium pink-amber hue with a moderate haze and a finger of frothy pink foam atop. I think it looks intriguing!

Smell: a rich, sweet cherry aroma that reminds me of cherry-flavored cough drops, though perhaps not as medicinal. Very candylike indeed. There's a bit of an artificial character to it (though the ingredient list includes quite a bit of cherry concentrate), but I'm a sucker for cherries so it's pretty enticing to me anyway.

Taste: cherry, right up front, along with plenty of sweetness. The underlying beer doesn't really come through, and although I'm mostly totally okay with carbonated alcoholic cherry juice, it would be nice to have a little bit of maltiness in the mix as well.

Mouthfeel: medium body with a decent carbonation and creaminess.

Overall: this is oversweet, but the cherry flavor in it is really good. I'm weak for cherry beers, so this gets my seal of approval, but it's definitely not going to be for everyone.

I really wanted to like this “sour cherry ale”, as I adore both lambics and Soproni’s Óvatos Duhaj line of (otherwise) excellent craft beers, but this shouldn’t even be called a beer to begin with.

It’s just so cloyingly sweet, it’s impossible to taste anything else (other than sugar, followed by cherry flavors, which makes sense, because fructose is listed as an ingredient ahead of sour cherry concentrate.)

I’m not even going to bother with detailed notes. This is not a beer. This is a carbonated fruit drink with 4% ABV.

This is just a simple fruit beer (not a lambic) but it is all good - taste like real cherries, really intensive / like a cherry soda. Wonder where does the ale come into play?