Cobern's Lichtenhainer
Troubled Monk Brewery

This was a first for me, in many ways. I’ve never had this style of beer, and it’s TM’s first seasonal that falls flat on its face. This smoked sour is thin, with an odor and taste that reminds me of burning wet wood. The malt and sour flavors mix rather innocuously to create an unmemorable beer. If you want to try this, worry not, it won’t be flying off the shelves.

355ml can - the result of a recent Red Deer Brewers homebrewing competition. A 'smoked sour', whose style originates in Eastern Germany.

This beer pours a clear, pale golden yellow colour, with a teeming tower of puffy, finely foamy, and somewhat creamy off-white head, which leaves but a few specks of mitochondrial lace around the glass as it quickly subsides.

It smells of acrid wood smoke, a bit of burnt rubber, some sour yeastiness, roasted cereal malt, and little else. The taste is gritty and grainy pale malt, sour cream, some free-range damp ashiness, over-toasted saltine crackers, fading scorched rubber, and maybe a bit of earthy and floral noble hoppiness.

The carbonation is fairly active in its palate-rousing frothiness, the body an adequate medium weight, and not particularly smooth, as that smoke gets all up in my grille. It finishes off-dry, the base malt charging right ahead, with the sour and smokey essences clinging on, like a bad memory (or dingleberry).

Overall - I'm sure that this is a well-rendered version of the style, given who's making it here, but perhaps it's a style that should have stayed buried in the past. Smoked beers can certainly be good or even great, but adding sour where sour ain't needed just plain sucks.