Kronenbourg 1664 Fruits Rouges
Brasseries Kronenbourg

25 cl bottle into a fluted glass. Generous foam on pinkish brew. Nose is grain and berries. Taste follows - strawberry / raspberry.,. it’s OK, a bit water, doesn’t suck.
Mildly medium mouth, medium high carbonation.
Overall, nice something different with friendly conversation.,.

Kronenbourg 1664 Fruits Rouges. Got a 500 ml can

Look: Fine pink colour. Cloudy with about a finger of white/pink head

Smell: Wheat, Raspberry

Taste: Mild Witbier with strawberry and Raspberry juice.

Feel: Light to medium body, light carbonation. Easy drinking

Overall would I recommend it ? Yes

Will I buy it again ? Yes

Pours a fine pink, mildly cloudy. These types of beers are cloudy in the way their wheat beer sediment is always finely suspended. Not sure how they do that but it’s a feature of wheat macros. The blue glass looks nice, looks a little more pale in the glass with the fine fizzy head dissipating immediately

Aroma of wheat, very gentle. Mildly grassy hop smell. Raspberry and slightly syrupy fruity smells.

Taste follows the nose, and is fairly straightforward, if not somewhat unremarkable. However, it doesn’t taste medicinal or overwhelming, if anything it’s very mild. The faintest grainy tastes fade to some raspberry and elderberry flavour.

It’s well carbonated, fizzy, which gives it a crisp taste. Easy to drink, it finishes somewhat dry but very sweet. There is no tartness like a sour beer here. And there is no long finish, grainy or otherwise, that is usually typical of a witbier. Very light bodied.

I won’t lie, however, my expectations for this were fairly low and this kind of exceeded them. Don’t get me wrong, it’s pretty bland. But it’s easy drinking and it finishes clean, with no off flavours or lingering nastiness. I was expecting some syrupy flavours or overwhelming sweetness due to the fact that the fruit flavours are added to their base Witbier in the form of juice concentrate. If there is any coriander or orange peel in the base beer, it’s not apparent here as the fruit juices take centre stage.

Overall, if you want a really clean drinking, light bodied beer to refresh yourself that isn’t an American macro, nothing wrong with this. Especially if it’s on sale. Otherwise it’s a tad expensive for me when I could get a Trappist beer or stout instead, but it’s not terrible by any means.

330 ml blue bottle, from a local grocery store. ABV is 4.5%. Peach-coloured beer, moderate white head. Strong and sweetish aroma of crushed black elderberries and raspberries. Medium sweet flavour of said berries, also orange, hints of coriander and hops.

 

 

 

 

Pretty unremarkable stuff. Hazy ruddy pink in colour with a moderate head that settles to a ring and partial film. Soft fruity nose that is slightly perfumey in character. Generic berry flavour, maybe leaning towards strawberries. Some wheat in there. Soft light mouthfeel. Summer patio stuff, but there are better examples out there.

500 mL can from The Beer Store; best before Jul 2019 and served slightly chilled.

Pours a pale, pinkish-amber colour, with a hazy, translucent body topped off with more than a finger of smooth, soapy white head. It lingers for five minutes or so, steadily receding until only a creamy collar and thin cap remain; not much lacing at first, but it does build up as the level in the glass drops. It smells mainly of berries - raspberry, primarily, but the elderberry juice is also noticeable, and a hint of strawberry also comes out of somewhere. Quite sugary-sweet, too, with faint suggestions of grainy, wheaty malts and citrus peel.

The taste is not quite as diabetic coma-inducing as I'd feared, though it *is* definitely more saccharine than I'd prefer. Hints of the base witbier do crop up throughout the sip - in the form of gritty wheat and orange peel - but for the most part, it's the adjunct juices that do the heavy lifting . The elderberry is almost a little too prominent - frankly I'd prefer more raspberry presence, to help turn the dial towards 'tart' and away from 'candy sweet' (the latter being where it is, unfortunately, firmly fixated). The sip concludes with a hint of strawberry, leading up to a watered-down aftertaste of fruit juice, grains, and the faintest suggestion of coriander - I almost wonder why they bothered adding it at all. Very light in body, with relatively assertive carbonation levels that prickle that palate continuously, providing some much-needed crispness to this beer. Reasonably refreshing in the short term, but all that sugar is gonna dehydrate you eventually...

Final Grade: 3.25, a C+. I'm not real big on their Blanc, as it's an objectively weak witbier... and Kronenbourg's Blanc Fruits Rouges doesn't fair much better than its progenitor. This is at least a passable light/fruit beer - i.e. I would not necessarily call it a bad example of its style - but it's just too sweet, one-dimensional, and artificial-tasting to align well with my taste preferences. I don't hate it, but I have no compelling reason to return, either - if you're not a ticker or a malternative fan, then feel free to skip this, because you're not missing much.

 

Pours a pale red with thick, creamy head.

Smell is quite sweet with lots of strawberries and raspberries with just a hint of wheat an yeast.

Taste is very much like a fairly mild witbier mixed with strawberriy juice. Sweeet, almsot too sweet, and just a hint of the base beer on the finish.

Mouthfeel is medium and quite creamy.

Overall, a very summery beer, refreshing but a bit boring.

 

July 28 2023

1L howler from the Century Park Liquor Depot in Edmonton, who are fast making me forget about their corporate overlords (or just accepting them - hard to say). Anyways, a witbier (this brewery's best-selling 'blanc'), flavoured with elderberries and raspberry something or other.

This beer pours a hazy, medium salmon amber colour, with a near teeming tower of puffy, rocky, and yet fizzy pale pink head, which leaves some random eroded limestone cliff lace around the glass as it quickly dissolves.

It smells of intense raspberry cream (like the stuff my Mom used to make those awesome summertime pies out of), an almost equal to the task lemon/lime citrus peel acerbity, rock candy, a further simple syrup sweetness, and very tame hints of wheat and pale malt that couldn't get some other gig. The taste is rather sugary pale and wheat cereal-forward malt, muddled raspberry and those Swedish 'berry' candies, fading generic citrus notes, some weirdly metallic (aspartame) sweetness, and really nothing further.

The carbonation is quite laid-back in its mostly insouciant-seeming frothiness, the body a so-so middleweight, and more or less smooth, yet with an uncertain minor astringency that takes things down a peg or so here. It finishes still on the sweet side, the initial raspberry goodness now blended into a lingering sugary morass.

Overall, this is right on par with the base brew, excepting that the banal treatment of the witbier style is further dumbed down by the heavy-handed generic adjunct berry fruitiness. Much more akin to a cooler than a beer, IMHO, but that opining out of the way, essentially easy to drink, for obvious reasons (yeah, beer brain turned right the fuck off).