Flemish Red Brett Sour
Mill Street Brew Pub

Bottle: Poured a clear reddish color ale with a large off-white foamy head with OK retention and some lacing. Aroma of Brett notes with some oak and tart notes is OK. Taste is a mix of weird Brett notes with some oak and tart cherry notes which more or less works well together. Some vinous notes are also perceptible. Body is about average with good carbonation. This taste like a quickly put together Flanders Red and end up lacking some depth.

 

 

Deep brown with a reddish tinge, cloudy, an topped with 4 fingers of beige head. This one was a gusher when the wax seal on the flip top head was opened.

Smells of cherries, sour mash, balsamic vinegar, a hint of Brett, some oak qualities,

Surprisingly sweet with a sour base, then a sort of action figure plastic quality. The oak is there, the Brett is there, but its as though it can't decide between sweet or sour, then falls flat to plastic in the middle.

Medium body, moderate carbonation, not enough acidity.

Drinking on the lake, Dec 18th, 2017. I think I said all there is to say already.

 

750 ml wax sealed bottle purchased from the LCBO for $9.95 CDN. I hope this bottle can live up to its hefty price tag as many of the recent Mill Street beers have been underwhelming. Served fairly cold into a chalice. This bottle called Flemish Farmhouse Brett Sour.

Appearance - ruddy brown or reddish color. A half finger of off tan head that dissipates quickly no lacing.

Smell - kind of strange with some cherry and a hint of balsamic, but there's also a funky sweetness normally I associate with high alcohol Belgian pale ales or tripels. Maybe its candi sugar which is certainly out of character for this style. Doesn't really fit the nose of either saison or Flemish red.

Taste - minimal sourness, more bitterness, no balsamic, yeasty but weird astringency too. Not horrible but not really great for the style whatever this style is supposed to be. Certainly rates out better as a saison rather than a Flemish Red. Taste is flat across the board.

Mouthfeel - high carbonation if Flanders ale, appropriate if saison. Moderately drying finish but body is a little limp. After first few sips, carbonation is flat too.

Overall - a major miss especially for the price tag. This is one of those beers trying to do too many things at once. Keep it simple, make the labelling simple and prepare the consumer for the expectations. I guess if the goal was to make a saison that has the appearance of a Flanders red they succeeded?

After becoming a huge fan of Belgian red sours over the summer with the LCBO carrying limited releases of both Duchesse de Bourgogne and Rodenbach Grand Cru, I was super excited to give this a try.

I was disappointed in every possible respect. This beer possesses absolutely none of the qualities I've come to expect from the style. To even call this beer a sour is bizzarre and an outright lie. It's a very malt-forward beer with just the mildest hint of farmhouse funk to it, and almost no perceptable tartness to it at all. Honestly, the closest thing I've had to this in the past was my home brew pseudo-clone of Fat Tire, about 10 months after bottling when it began to take on just a hint of sourness and general off characteristics of a beer past its prime. It tastes like an accident that they then put into fancy, wax-sealed 750ml bottles and asked $10 for.

Is it so bad as to be undrinkable? No, but neither was my stale home brew Belgian red. It feels like an incredible betrayal to drop $10 on something sold as a "Flemish Farmhouse Brett Sour", only to find that actually, what ends up in the glass is worlds apart from the Rodenbach sitting just a few feet over on the shelf. Had it been labeled for what it is - a sorta funky belgian style red - I wouldn't have even touched it.