Kill Your Idles: Red Berry
Idle Hands Craft Ales

 

 

 

 

 

Poured into a tulip.
The appearance was a nice looking glossy red color with a small white sheet of foaminess for a head. Just a wisp of concave lace.
The aroma had a wonderful blend of sweet and tart red raspberries and a tickle of strawberry sweet and tart qualities rolling into a subtle funk with some bleu cheesy tanginess ever so slightly on the back end. Light red cherries. Montmorency? Hmmmmm, maybe, but I feel that's pushing it a bit.
The flavor mixes a fantastic blend of sweet to tart with an ample sour-ish character. Mild funk and sweet grass with a touch of citrus. Then a smooth rich berry sweet and tart quality in the aftertaste, somewhat sticky.
The mouthfeel was about medium bodied with a fair sipping quality about it. Some distractible tartness but not overbearing. Carbonation felt fine. ABV felt as projected. Finish is all about the berries with a practically perfect level of tart and sweet.
Overall, not only is this an awesome offering by Idle Hands, might be the best beer to date by them for me but it's extremely well brewed mastering the authentic qualities of those berries!

I've had some of the other KYIs before, but this is my first time with the Red Berry variation. This is a kettle-soured ale brewed with lactose that is fermented with strawberries and raspberries. Let's get right into it!

Pours a blush wine-like color with some creamier red-orange hues going on. Pretty retentive head that builds up to three fingers at its maximum height, and it comes with surprisingly decent lace and legs. Carbonation seems a bit stagnant from the outset, but the opacity of the beer really prevents me from getting a good look at any of the goings-on behind the scenes. Overall, a nice color and a little less "red" than I assumed it'd be given the name and fruits involved. Semi-surprising but solid anyway. For the record, I have given moderate scores for appearance to both of the previous KYI beers I've reviewed, but I would say that this is the best looking of the bunch.

The nose is raspberry forward with a little more subtle cherry and strawberry kicking around underneath. I'm liking the raspberry aspect, but I wish there were a bit more strawberry. I've heard that they're a little harder to coax flavor out of in beers like this, though, so I guess it's forgivable. It honestly smells a lot more like tart, Montmorency cherries than anything, though, weirdly enough.

I'm surprised, once again, at how tame this is on the tongue. It's much less acidic than the previous entries in the series, instead seeming to focus more on the fruit expression and the base beer itself. It actually has a wheat-forward heftiness to it, but before that can truly come to fruition, I start to get a "berries-and-cream" flavor that drowns everything else out. The lactose is doing some serious work here, which I think is both unusual and welcomed. I didn't really pick up much of it in the Blood Orange or Tropical versions of this beer that I've had and enjoyed, especially as it had to do with the actual flavor profile. This is certainly out of the ordinary for the series, but I really love the more restrained acidity and (maybe-unintentional) attempt to root KYI back into traditional "fruited beer." Perhaps I'm seeing some things that aren't really there with this, but it's making me think, which is always good!

The feel is slick and semi-sweet with tartness uniformly displayed throughout (though, as mentioned, to a much lesser extent than the others I've had in the series). Carbonation is precisely focused on the front of the palate, where the "beer" flavors prevail. As the finish comes across the tongue, more fruitiness displays itself and some more of the raspberry and subtle strawberry make themselves known. This is a very interesting entry into the Kill Your Idles line of fruit sours by Idle Hands, and I, of course, look forward to seeking out any new additions to the series. Still have to get that Pluot one, actually... hmm...