Bluegrass Nut Brown Lambic

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

A solid pour into my 25cl tulip glass produces a three-finger thick, tan colored head. The beer is a murky red-amber color that shows a hazy, orange-red, light amber hue. The aroma smells of strawberries and is quite fruity, but not really cherry smelling per se. Actually I can smell both strawberry flesh as well as the piquant seeds in this beer. A backnote of lactic and acetic notes that just barely suggest a tartness here. There seems to be a touch of dusty, musty toasted grain here as well, but all in all this has a fairly mutted aroma and isn’t nearly as distinct as I was expecting. Nicely tart up front with more lactic than anything, though a bit of acetic sneaks in towards the finish. The flavor definitely has a fruitiness to it, but again it is not distinctive of cherries. In fact it, again, reminds me of strawberries more than anything; it is not distinctly of strawberries as the aroma was, but I can still taste that crunchy strawberry flavor that one gets when you bite into a rip strawberry and its small seeds. The acetic presence is growing on me, or it is becoming more noticeable as time goes on. This is not overly tart, but the acetic notes do add a bite that is not in the usually more lactic focused Lambic style, in fact there may not be too much of lactic presence here in the end. This is fairly light bodied, though it does have a certain viscous slickness to it. While I might be convinced this was a strawberry sour beer, I am having a hard time seeing this as a fruit beer at all much less a cherry one; it is fairly fruity over all though, but I would hazard a guess that the brewer didn’t use proper sour cherries for this beer as you really need to in order to get a proper chewy cherry character. As with the Nut Brown Lambic I had the other week, this beer is a poor attempt at actually being a Lambic; though it could be a half way decent attempt at a Flemish Red. I like that this beer is quite balanced in its flavors, even if they aren’t quite what I would prefer.