Cantillon Lou Pepe Kriek

Aroma: 9 | Appearance: 10 | Mouthfeel: 9 | Flavor: 10 | Overall: 10

Long time wish list item, shared by Jason. 2012 vintage. Reddy pink bubbly pour, still with a white bubbly head and light lacing. Sour cherries, tart and yum, funk, dry champagne, grape skins, more funk, more sour cherries. Freaking fantastic. Everything I hoped it would be - HUGE thanks to Jason for sharing with a good friends.

Aroma: 9 | Appearance: 8 | Mouthfeel: 9 | Flavor: 8 | Overall: 9

Dark ruby pour, very lively with a billowing frothy head and big time carbonation. Tart cherries are in great balance with the wild wheat malts. A bit funky, but not too much. Sweet and exceptionally dry. A prime example for the style, wonderfully done.

Aroma: 9 | Appearance: 9 | Mouthfeel: 9 | Flavor: 9 | Overall: 9

more cherry apparent then in the regular kriek. still way more sour and tart than sweet, but the cherries were obvious, as well as the intense tartness. still not sold on Cantillon at the high prices, but this is a very good beer. 8/11-the 2008 vintage just blew my mind. first Cantillon beer I've had that was hands down worth the $. i don't know if it's the vintage, or the age, but i'll be looking for more. ridiculous complexity, and one of the best uses of fruit in beer i've had to date. time will tell if this one was the anomoly, or the last, but the 08 was amazing!

Aroma: 9 | Appearance: 9 | Mouthfeel: 8 | Flavor: 8 | Overall: 8

750 ml corked and capped bottle, courtesy of Cardinal Pub & Bar, Stavanger. Vintage 2007, ABV is 5%. 300 gram of Schaerbeek cherries are added per liter beer. Aged in oak barrels. Deep red colour, huge pink head. Intense aroma of ripe cherries, hints of red wine vinegar. Equally intense flavour of sour cherries, not as lemony as the Lou Pepe Framboise. Drank it a bit too cold, still refreshing and pleasant to drink.

Aroma: 9 | Appearance: 9 | Mouthfeel: 9 | Flavor: 9 | Overall: 9

Bottle: Poured a deep cloudy red color lambic with a medium pink foamy head with good retention and some lacing. Aroma of naturally sweet and tart cherry is quite wonderful. Taste is also dominated by loads of lightly sweet and fresh cherries with some tart notes and a funky aftertaste. Acidity is very well balanced which is a bit surprising considering the base beer. World classic for sure and something I would drink more often is it was cheaper and more easily available.

Aroma: 10 | Appearance: 9 | Mouthfeel: 9 | Flavor: 9 | Overall: 9

Recently, a downtown establishment has brought in several of the Cantillon beers, including the entire Lou Pepe line (Framboise, Kriek, Gueuze)........and I've tried ALL of them. This was a nice ruby red pour, no head, and a tart aroma of raspberries. Unlike the framboise, this had no sweetness in it whatsoever, just an earthy tartness that was quite dry, yet flavourful.

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

woah, very sour and shocking.."i can't open my left eye"-after the first sip... rasperberry colour, low head ring .. . very bold, with a touch of musk, pretty strong stuff .. .my stomach hurts.. .

Aroma: 8 | Appearance: 7 | Mouthfeel: 9 | Flavor: 9 | Overall: 9

I tried this one at the 2008 Max's Belgian Beer Festival in Baltimore, MD. It was an interesting little bugger though. I was really shocked at what I was about to taste.

Now for some time my buddy Pete had been telling me that Cantillon made the "super sour" lambics, so when I arrived on Max's and saw this one on the menu, I had to try it out.

The beer has a dark, ruby red color to it that looks pretty cool, somewhat typical for a kriek lambic though. There was no head at all and very little carbonation bubbling up out of the glass. It almost looked like wine to tell you the truth. You could definitely smell the cherries mixed with a vinegar-like aroma coming out of the glass.

The taste is crazy though! So first you are hit with this super-dooper sour cherry flavor that really makes you suck in your cheeks. The sourness is so potent it even got up into my nasal cavities. Similar to an effect you get when eating wasabi. Then, after all that is said and done, BAM! You are hit with this flavor that I can only explain as a coconut macaroon flavor. Now thinking that this was just my tastebuds acting weird, I asked those around my to order a glass and see what they thought. Across the board, everyone said "Holy cow! I know exactly what you are talking about when you say there's a coconut macaroon aftertaste."

So there we have it. This is a pretty cool lambic and something unique that I've never had before. For the purpose of my stomachs sanity, I probably couldn't handle drinking more than a sampler glass of this stuff. So if you do get a bottle, be sure to have lots of friends over to enjoy it with you.

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

(Lou Pepe Kriek 2002). Deep ruby red colour, small head. Aroma is cantillonish sourness, but a lot of sour cherries also. Flavour is cherry, sourness and some cookies and nuts. Lovely balanced Cantillon. I just loved it.

Aroma: 10 | Appearance: 8 | Mouthfeel: 10 | Flavor: 8 | Overall: 10

HUGE thanks to northyorkSammy for this one.
1999 Vintage, aged in good shape for 7 some odd years! Wow! Poured a beautiful ruby colour, thinly vieled with a soft pink head that circled the trim. A really beautiful - perfect - appearence. A pungeant funk aroma. Not fruity - certainly gueuzey though. Surprisingly not much fruit in the taste either. I might not have guessed this is a kriek. Perhaps the fruit aspect has softened with the time its been aged ? Whatever the case any fruit notes are certainly faded (at best!) That however, would be the only thing I could hold against this beer. This is a sipper, only if you can resist the urge I had to keep going back for more. You lick your lips and it's like you just ate a ton of sour candy. Leaves that sugary residue in the mouth/on the lips. So sour - it's fantastic. This actually has become like a crazy rose wine in many ways. That may be the msot accurate way to describe it. It really burns a hole in the of the mouth. Kinda burns! And this is at 7 years old - again, fantastic. Very tart. I could have used more flavour but the whole experience of the mouthfeel is nothing short of incredible. Be happy to finish off with the sediment - wow. Thanks again Sammy.