Birrificio Italiano Sciresona

Aroma: 7 | Appearance: 7 | Mouthfeel: 6 | Flavor: 6 | Overall: 6

Murky brown tea pour with a ringed cap and little lacing. Very carbonated - when cap was removed, a steady stream of foam was released out of the top of the bottle until pouring into glass. Sour cherry vinegar aroma with a slight bourbon quality, lemon zest, sour apples, some barnyard funk and some Bretts in the yeasties. Taste was very much like the aroma with an almost overpowering sour cherry vinegar tartness with a touch of oaken vanilla. Big, tart cherry and sour and vinegary - just not my favorite.

Aroma: 5 | Appearance: 8 | Mouthfeel: 6 | Flavor: 6 | Overall: 6

as i popped the cap, the top flew off and the bottle gushed everywhere and i ended up loosing over half the bottle, we are off to a fantastic start .. smell is hope filled, jolly ranchers, sour cherries, sour patch kids ... dark cherry juice with a light fizz appearance ... good dose of bitters with a sour back bone ... a nice sour ale that contains a great cherry sweetness/sourness but i want it bigger and bolder, but its italian and it shows it .. Wishlist cross-off: put on originally 11/24/2007

Aroma: 6 | Appearance: 7 | Mouthfeel: 8 | Flavor: 6 | Overall: 6

7.5% so likely the most recent batch
This was definitely a well carbonated beer as it almost immediately foamed up and spilled beer on the counter before I could start pouring and got it over the sink. The head is very fizzy without a lot of structure to it and despite the ample carbonation disappears after a minute or two. The head, when there, was a deeply stained, dark tan colored head that had dark patches to it where sediment had discolored it. The beer is extremely hazy and is a murky, dark amber color. Flavors of cherries are found up front, but there is lots of other stuff going on here. Soft medicinal notes, move to some sweaty-goat like notes, some cured yet slightly moldy leather aromatics and then the finish has a note that is distinctly reminiscent of the fake fruity note found in watermelon jolly rancher candy. This definitely has developed some Brettanomyces character and this and the jolly rancher note become the most noticeable part of the aroma.

Quite dry with a light sweetness to it, this beer has a lightish body, but does have a touch of density to it that keeps it from being thin. Grassy, almost plant stem flavors are found up front and this finishes with some medicinal phenolic notes that at times taste a bit like curing plastic and then olive brine. The light tartness accentuates a touch of earthy, cherry skin flavors, a touch of cherry fruitiness in the finish, a light tamarind note. This definitely has a bit of a vegetal flavor to it and it has a butyric acid induced, earthy, musky, sweaty, old, damp blanket / leather flavor to it as well.

Definitely complex, but doesn't really work. More fruit flavor would go a long way towards balancing the funky notes here; maybe even a touch of sweetness would help, but I like that this is on the dry side. Based on potential, I will definitely give this another try, especially since I think that there is probably quite a bit of variability between batches.

Purchased: Papago Brewing Co, Scottsdale AZ

Aroma: 6 | Appearance: 6 | Mouthfeel: 6 | Flavor: 6 | Overall: 6

pours with a cloudy reddish-brown body topped by a quickly disappearing head wtih little lacing. It’s sweeet yet slightly sour with a note of ass and a little cherry. meidum bodied and dry.

Aroma: 7 | Appearance: 5 | Mouthfeel: 6 | Flavor: 8 | Overall: 8

Poured a deep red-burgundy color with a strong carbonated head that had great retention, yet somewhat weak lacing (like soda-pop). The aroma was down right funky, smelled like a lambic with off aromas (can you really sense such a thing in a lambic?). A little barnyard funkiness, bret?, rubber, azalea bushes (but not skunky), rather interesting and somewhat concerning after dropping $18 on this sucker. The flavor, though, was much better, a soft lambic kriek type experience blended with some flemish sours perhaps. This had the funk underneath, but the tartness was gentle instead of mouth puckering like a Cantillon, berries, cherries, light wood, pretty drinkable. The mouthfeel was thin to moderate (the latter only after some warming), artificially carbonated. This one had some shortcomings in the lesser critical categories, which keeps its average down for me, but overall and in the flavor category this was nice (although short of a $18 beer - so go the Italian beers, imo).