Strawberry Sourpuft Girls
Barreled Souls Brewing Company

 

16 oz can acclimated to 44°F and poured into a teku glass.

Pours hazy, the color of dried apricots, but a little darker, I've made homemade strawberry extract that came out a very similar color to this. Has quite a bit of lighter color sediment of various sizes floating around, plus lots of big chunks of strawberries that have had their color leeched into the beer. Produces a 1/2-1 finger fuzzy and soft looking white head, sort of sudsy, leaving almost no lacing. I understand others thinking it's ugly but I think it's pretty, personally, it looks like some lamp or art piece.

Initial aroma is a moderately to highly biting tart smell, backed by a creamy to almost buttery sweetness. I notice strawberry, raspberry (perhaps mental association with tartness), and imitation vanilla.

After agitating, it's a big tart and sour mix, with the same vanilla.

Initial taste before swallowing is tart with almost a milk taste, real strawberry is strong, taking a short while to accrue enough to notice.

After swallowing the tartness is strong right away, a little sour lying on top. What tastes like salt comes up, hitting mostly the back of the top of the tongue, and a tiny bit gag reflex activating. Immediately after comes strawberry, in the forms of taste and esters in similar proportions. These two tastes last until Somewhere before the aftertaste starts. Somewhere after the strawberry starts I notice a relatively mild dryness in the back of the roof of the mouth and tip of the tongue which lasts into the aftertaste, becoming the same type of dry you get in wine, with only strawberry esters to accompany it. During the last few sips it seemed as though the alcohol were noticeably higher, it tasted like fermented fruit and gave it that chest warming and eye altering effect.

Mouthfeel is frothy and slightly creamy, it feels good. Not immensely so, but satisfying is a good word. The final gulp contained all the big strawberry chunks, but I didn't notice them when it went down.

Overall I can't say I'm crazy about it for a few reasons but I'm not at all going to bash it. I sometimes think, when I drink flavored beers "this really could use more (flavor advertised)" because I can't taste it/can't taste much of it." In the cases of not being able to taste much of it, I usually rein myself in and end up thinking it was likely brewed in tests with more and not released that way for a reason. In this case I didn't get much strawberry and thought that, but commercial strawberries taste like not much if you've tasted wild strawberries. Marshmallows contain salt, so that would be where that salty taste came from, but I'm not sure why it ticked my gag reflex, not badly, but it did. So, tart fruit sours are not really my thing (the flavor combination sounded excellent so I picked this one up, and I do love dairy bacteria sours). With that said, this one was a lot easier on my enamel, and tasted a lot better to me than other tart fruit sours I've had. Just overall didn't really kill it for me, I'm sorry.

Won't buy again, unfortunately, but I will keep the beautiful can, and I know it was good and I can recommend it to people who enjoy the style, though!