Sour Brown
Thornbridge Brewery

 

Pours dark brown with a big frothy head, recedes fairly quick to some traces and lacing.
Smells mostly of tart cherries, forest berries, vinegar, mild caramel, faint wine barrel, some barnyard funk in the back, sour lactic acids.
Initial taste of vinegar and barnyard funk, with horseblanket, green hay and some damp wood notes. The lactobacillus too with some extra funky sourness. These give way quickly to sweet and sour berries, dark and bitter cherries, dark grapes, followed by mild "brown ale" notes of black olives, faint cocoa and caramel. Tannic fruitiness in the finish from the red wine barrels, nice and woody, plus the lingering barnyard and a wormwood wine bitter note too.
Medium body and carbonation, dry and bitter finish with a muddled aftertaste from all the stuff that's in the beer.
Very very funky, maybe a bit too much, sometimes chaotic and unbalanced. An interesting twist, tho at a pretty steep price.

 

 

 

 

Geyser. Nothing gives a bad first impression like a beer that's improperly bottle conditioned; probably a good fifth of the bottle wound up on the counter/floor, and this wasn't cheap – I think that's about £2 worth of beer wasted. Bah humbug. So it looks pretty bad as a stain on a dishcloth, and pretty average in a glass. Frothy and loudly fizzy, rouge-tinged brown with a poorly retained taupe head.

Smells very interesting – very interesting indeed. As funky and complex as the best of them. Sour cherries, sour prunes, black olives, coffee grounds, dark caramel, and cola, mostly. And a touch of Balsamic vinegar for good measure. I'm a little stuffed up at the moment, so there's probably more... but you get the idea.

Tastes like a solid Flemish red in the vein of Rodenbach, but with a little bit more brown ale maltiness – chocolate, coffee, and licorice accompany the familar notes of tobacco, raisins, cherries, and blackberries. This is like a grown up version of Cherry Coke, with the same level of fizz as you might expect from that. First impressions aside, this is a really good beer – imagine a funked-up, sour, fizzy liquid version of a Black Forest Gateau.