Rare Flemish Stout
Wild Rose Brewery & Taproom

 

 

Hmmmm... Not my favorite.

It is quite foamy, with a deep brown head, and the color is very nice.
The nose is fruity and slightly yeasty. So far so good.

The taste-- sour, raspberry, lots of grain, lots of bitterness.
Where's the malt sweetness? The bottle description says "funky", and that about describes it.
But "funky" and "drinkable" are too far apart on my taste scale. I had a hard time finishing my pint, let alone the rest of the 650ml bottle.

Appearance - Pours a dark cola brown with a finger of tan head.

Smell - dark berry fruits, caramel malts, sour woodiness, and earthy and leafy hops.

Taste - dark berry fruits upfront followed by the sour woodiness. The caramel malts follow through alongside the earthy and leafy hops. There is cherry cough drop element as well.

Mouthfeel - Medium bodied with moderate carbonation. Finishes smooth with a lingering sourness.

Overall - An interesting venture by Wild Rose. The brew is elevated through the barrel though I feel as the sweetness and sourness from the barrel are a tad much for this style.

Yeasty, fruity, sour, with big roasted malt character (albeit one that fades with time). There's not a lot of sense of the supposed barrel ageing here, but the (indistinct) fruits and the sour and the roasted malt all come through in a big way. I do wish it was a bit heavier in body, but this is quite a nice offering (albeit one that's far, far too expensive to merit a repeat purchase)

750ml bottle, MMXV 'edition', and hot on the heels of the most recent 'Rare' series offering from Wild Rose. A Belgian-style stout, aged in unspecified wine barrels for 6 months.

This beer pours a solid oily black, with perfunctory basal orange cola edges, and two skinny fingers of puffy, rocky, and somewhat creamy brown head, which leaves a bit of sparse mitochondrial lace in spots around the glass as it quickly blows off.

It smells of muddled dark berry fruit (the adjunct cherries and raspberries in conjunction with the wine barrel's extractions?), semi-sweet, if thin caramel malt, bitter cocoa powder, a laid-back sour yeasty woody character, distant volcano ash, and tame earthy, leafy, and weedy hop bitters. The taste is kind of bready caramel malt, sour cherry cough drops, wet falling ash (like when you're around a campfire and it starts to rain), gritty red wine barrel lees, microwaved raspberry pie, low-key black licorice notes, and more indistinct earthy and weedy hoppiness.

The bubbles are pretty understated in their straining to be noticed frothiness, the body a so-so medium weight, and generally smooth, the sour essences here really of the gentle fresh fruit type, ergo no biggie. It finishes off-dry, those heavily fruit-flecked chocolate and roasted caramel flavours barely diminished.

Overall, another interesting barrel-aged affair for this increasingly adventurous Cowtown brewery - first, the year-round kettle-soured Cowbell, and now this series of yeasty and sour offerings, whose very existence presages an Alberta beer drinking community that has almost turned the corner on such things - bravo! Oh, and this site really needs to get on the whole 'Belgian Stout' thing, IMHO.