Flanders Red
Cascade Brewing / Raccoon Lodge & Brewpub

This is the base beer for all their other sours. On draught at the brewpub, served ice cold in a cervoise, their Flanders Red is a chill-hazed amber brown with a small eggshell head that leaves light, scattered lace.

Smell is very nice, big sour cherries, red wine, oak. Sour, sweet and alluring, I love it.

Taste good, very tart and dry, all lacto though. I'm sure Raccoon doesn't use brett or acetobacter, so it just pure sourness, with none of the barnyard, or more definative of the style, vinegar flavor, making it a bit one dimensional. But that is my favorite of the 3 main souring microbes so I can't really complain, I could just use more depth. Starts out very tart, with a flash of caramel and raisin maltiness before an abrupt finish. That lacto just seems to chew through everything else, and in fact, even their other fruit beers and other sours all start tasting very similarly, like sour fruity seltzer. I'm aging a few of the fruits but I probably should reconsider, the fruit will surely fall out and leave me with this simpler, albeit intense sour.

Mouthfeel is dry and crisp, puckering and tannic, with a clean, seltzer finish - where did it go!

Drinkability is nevertheless rather high, I really dig these, and drink them as much as possible. Still, the extreme acidity limits me to 1 or 2 before my stomach balks. And while I'm glad it's not a sugary, cider vinegar Flanders Red, I could use more complexity. But it's a local well made sour that's almost always available, and I am really glad to work only a mile or two from one of the few US breweries focusing so much on wild barrel aged ales, and try to support them as much as possible for that. I'm surprised these guys haven't made a bigger name for themselves on the national beer geek scene, I'm sure it's just a matter of time....