Imperial Fruit Cocktail Hill
Southern Grist Brewing Co.

 

Ordered from Tavour, chilled and poured into an imperial pint glass.

Look: poured dark peachy, settled pink lemonade color (cloudy reddish hues). Bren said it looks tommata-color (lol). ... whatever that means.
Smell: sour fruit, almost spoiled milk (weird!). Some peach and pineapple. Faint smells of cherry but not sure we get pear... fruit juices really kind of meld together. As we let this set, the sour spoiled milk/fruit flavor really became aromatic and hung around in the glass making the sour spoiled flavor even more pronounced.
Taste: sour, acidic, then sour fruity (some pineapple, cherry, followed by more sour and somewhat spoiled fruit). The trailing ends if we reach and chew on it, we get some pear and peach... but they are really kind of melded together too much to really get them independent of one another. The spoiled milk/fruit flavor is almost too much to really catch anything else.
Feel: light, crisp, mild carbonation that lingers. Sour and acidic feel gives some pucker value.

Overall this is an interesting kettle sour that is acidic and mildly like rotten milk or rotten fruit. Not very pleasurable because of the overall lingering flavor. We drank enough to give a review then fed the rest to the sink. It didn’t seem to mind, but we did...

I would say Cheers but this was really kind of gross.

 

As a child, the flavors of canned and preserved fruit cocktail was a hit or miss. Sometimes the mood struck me and I loved it, then others it was a side dish to dismiss. it turns out that as an adult, the beer version of this fruit combo fares a little better.

Southern Grist's Imperial Fruit Cocktail Hill pours with a frothy, peachy gold appearance before settling down in a hazy and bold pink, mauve and orange color. Equally as curious but not quite as enticing, the fruit-filled nose also brings a musty butyric acidity that strikes the nose with a pungent, harsh and soured milk scent. But as this character fades as the ale out-gasses, the fruits of peach, pineapple, cherry and pear bring that melded and generic fruit medley.

Much more fruity and clean in its taste, the individual fruity are too numerous and too compacted to stand apart, but their seamless fusion allows for a strong fruit punch flavor to emerge, seemingly of sherbet, sorbet and taffy. A sweeter upstart soon gives way to a spicier, more acidic middle palate that rolls in the natural sour flavors of green apple, lime, lemon and red grape. Trending drying and spicy, the late palate is redolent with fruit puree and with hints of damp burlap and a return of pungent acids.

Medium bodied for sour ale, but still playing out refreshing and dry, the off-clean fruit beer finishes with fruit tannins that play out like fruit skins, seeds and stems while the peppery acidity trends mossy, gamey and nearly smokey with a vinous like alohol twinge.