Cherry Hieter
Phillips Brewing & Malting Co.

 

650 ml bottle poured into a tulip. A clear rusty reddish brown color with two fingers of frothy, fizzy beige head composed of numerous small tightly packed bubbles. Looks rather like a Flanders red.

Aroma is certainly smoky, a mellow hickory backbone with some caramel, red licorice, and sour apple notes. Does not particularly recall cherries. Similarly, the flavor is overall subtle, downplayed, mild ... Some light back bacon-like smoke, a fleck of brittle toffee, a fruitiness that recalls lemon-lime and raisin more than the cherries getting top billing on the label. Drinkable for a smoked brew. One does get some pie cherry in the finish along with a slight pine needle note (had to be some hops in here somewhere). A little grainy perhaps. Becomes rather drying over time. Great mouthfeel, though: Medium bodied (recalls a classic red ale), rather smooth and even a little creamy.

I can appreciate the generic red/citrus fruitiness here, along with the pleasant, low key, far from overwhelming smoke. More smoke on the nose than the palate. Would be useful to ease a novice into smoked beer territory.

 

 

This poured an amber like colour with a minimal head. The nose did present quite a bit of smoke as well as some leather. I didn't get much in the way of cherry though, just some mild malt. I thought the smoke flavour was more subtle than what the nose presented. Again I didn't get much in the way of cherry but a subtle sweetness that may be attributed to it. There was a bit of bitterness on the edge. Not a bad little smoked beer, but not very complex.

 

 

this beer made me want to punch myself in the face.

exactly what i was hoping. exciting.
too smoky? a tad, but it totally works and offsets the cherries which are NOT too sweet.
i freaking loved this madness.

Pours light amber with a cream colored head. Head collapses almost immediately, some lacing. Aroma is all smoke up front with a bit of sweetness behind. First taste is heavy on the smoke, but the cherries start coming through after that. After the smoke fades it's a sweet, almost cloying cherry flavour that dominates. Aftertaste is almost medicinal, like a cherry cough drop. Alcohol is hidden quite well, no 'hot' aroma or flavour. Delivers what's promised but could be balanced out with some hop bitterness

 

 

 

 

650ml bottle - a smoked ale, brewed with 'buckets of fresh cherries', and with a name apparently based on GCBF co-founder Gerry Hieter.

This beer pours a clear, dark ruby amber hue, with a fistful of puffy, tightly foamy, and somewhat fizzy off-white head, which leaves some decent linked island group lace around the glass as it lazily recedes. Quite a purdy little number, sez I.

It smells of meaty and bready caramel malt, wet ash, a rather meek earthy red fruitiness, a touch of doughy yeast, and singed leafy, weedy hops. The taste is less smoky - more straight campfire, sans the charred flesh component - a tight cherry wine fruity essence, gritty, grainy pale malt, a hint of caramel sweetness, a certain green stem-like astringency, and mild undertones of cold alcohol.

The carbonation is fairly tame, and mostly understated in its frothy outbursts, the body medium-light in weight, and more or less smooth, the acridity of the smoke having generally blown off by this point. It finishes with a mild resurgence of that charred graininess, amongst a once again generic red fruitiness.

Neither a particularly smokey nor cherry-forward brew, I gotta say, or at least at the same time - the smoke provides a heady opener, the strident cherry holds the middle, and they both kind of bail at the end. Not bad, just not all that good, given the promise of the heady guest ingredients.