Sour Crusher - Orange and Cherry
Skygazer Brewing Co

 

Slicing, peeling and carving oranges and cherries is no easy task, so might as well crush them. And when they are in a sour ale, then that job gets considerably easier.

Skygazer's cherry and orange flavored Sour Crusher hits the glass with dense and pulpy tarnish mauve appearance, opaque from its dense and fruity fog. It's froth reveals a juicy, radiant and tantalizing citrus and pitted fruit scents that's tribute to the reckless amounts of those prescribed orange and cherry additions. A rich sweetness of pastry dough, fruit preserves and a fruit rollup, any suggestions of malt come across as cereal fueled fruit puree.

As radiant as the beer opens with its full cherry focus, the sweetness lifts only slightly on the middle palate to reveal an undercurrent of sourness that plays out with the intensity of lime, lemon, cider and wine. Although the sweetness slowly fades, its juiciness remains and balances the acidity while adding complexity to the cherries and oranges. Trailing into a vinously tangy finish, the beer leaves impressions of smoothie, sherbet and spiked fruit punch on the late palate.

Full bodied and certainly fuller for sour ale, the base sourness gets a little lost in the fruit addition, but does provide a tangy foundation for the fruit. Finishing fruity and tart, the ale extends into a medium length aftertaste of cherry fruit, cider, cereal and sourdough.