Black & Red
Browary Regionalne Wąsosz

 

500ml bottle - a 'currant fruit beer', made with all craft ingredients, plus currant juice.

This beer pours a hazy, medium red-brick amber colour, with three fingers of puffy, finely foamy, and slightly bubbly pale pink head, which leaves some decent dissolving ice floe pattern lace around the glass as it quickly abates.

It smells rather strongly of a black currant and sweet cherry fruitiness, bready and doughy caramel malt, a hint of plain Pez candy chalkiness, and very faint earthy, leafy, and floral green hop bitters. The taste is sugary, and mostly indistinct black berries, grainy and bready caramel malt, some earthy mustiness, and more well understated leafy, weedy, and dead floral hoppiness.

The carbonation is adequate in its palate-saving frothiness, the body a solid middleweight, and generally smooth, with a nice creaminess pretty much there from the get-go. It finishes on the sweet side, all currant-y (apparently that's a word) and sort of malty in its bearing.

Overall - this is certainly a well-made fruit beer, as the guest ingredient isn't at all shy about expressing itself to the fullest, and the base ale is sufficient in its own stoic nature. Having had a sour black currant offering not that long ago, it is now nice to appreciate it from the other side of the spectrum.