Kriek
Meuse Brewing Company

Pours a cloudy deep brown-red, mahogany. Thin one finger head slowly recedes into a pale off-pink ring of bubbles. This Kriek is unfiltered

Tasty sour cherries on the nose, with a pungent aroma of funkiness. Wet wood, Dewwy earthiness, and barnyard straw. Sour yeastiness in the background.

Tasty and yet subtle complex flavours. Sour cherries are up front as expected, and the earthy funky flavours follow. They pale out slowly into an aftertaste of straw, gentle yeasts, and the mildest of malty tastes linger.

Mouthfeel shines here, the carbonation is medium, but small bubbles which makes it smoother than expected. The astringency is present but low, and the tartness is somewhere in the middle. This mixes to make it lightly sour but not quite a puckering sour, it is blended well and quite smooth.

Complex and subtle, the cherry flavour is pleasant, dark fruit forward. Barrel aged made with Ontario sour cherries and local ingredients, the 2017 vintage is at once both fresh and young tasting but with pleasant notes of an aged lambic. Funkier on the nose than the palate, this is a very smooth Kriek.

Note: this is one of my first ever Krieks, though I plan to have many more and have had a few lambics and Guezes. This is a remarkably tasty beer, definitely one to sip when you are in the mood, but I have one in the cellar I plan to try in a year or so. Meuse as always makes excellent beers, in styles that almost no other breweries make. They also aggressively use their own ingredients and local ones, on their own farm. I basically sound like their poster boys. I think a reason for their success? The two founders came over from the Netherlands and worked at other breweries, giving them a good experience and yet they are young, infusing a freshness and Canadian style into the beers. This is probably what makes their beers so exciting!