Cascade Kriek Ale

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

Pours clear mahogany with a good parchment head. Aroma gives tart cherry and stonefruit. Flavor provides tart cherry and stonefruit, a sweet bit. Texture yields decent body and peppy fizz with a woody finish.

Aroma: 8 | Appearance: 10 | Mouthfeel: 8 | Flavor: 10 | Overall: 9

On tap @ Cascades Barrel House. Muddled brown ruby red pour, bubbly head, little lacing. Nice carbonation. Tart, funky, cherry, fruity, woodsy aroma and flavor. Cherries, almost overripe, zing, tart, goodness all in an ale. Exquisite. Wonderful. Brought some of this bitch back with me too. Just a fantastic freaking beer.

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

This is a beautiful beer, although 750ml of it can be overwhelming. A clouded rust coloured pour with a thin effervescent head. Lemon juice, vinegar, and sour cherry make up the nose. Flavour has a sweet and sour theme to it ending on a sour note. Very easy to drink, but at 6.6%, you feel it.

Aroma: 8 | Appearance: 10 | Mouthfeel: 9 | Flavor: 9 | Overall: 8

theres nothing wrong with my eye! .. . pours a murky brown, light sturn foam .. . $5000? exsqueeze me? a baking powder??.. . nice cherry presence, light funkiness, and more cherry .. . a wonderful kriek style brew and could be used to intro people into funkers .. . We'll run through these with a fine-toothed comb, cross the Ts and dot the... lower-case Js.

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

light cherry and sour/funky aroma followed by a rather light feel and flavor as well. 2008 bottling...wondering if the cherry and or sour aspects have faded a bit. still tasty. nothing wrong with this beer, but it was the most expensive beer of the night and i'm scoring it lower than just about all of the others. i was expecting a little more fruit and/or sour/tasrtness. slightly fresher = slightly better, but the apricot kicks this one butt :)

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

Sour, cheesy, light cherry aroma. Nice bright, red brown color with almost no head. Very puckering, light-medium body. Nice sour flavor without an artificially thick cherry flavor. I could drink this one every day! Had it on draft and bottled.

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

Bottle: Poured a murky red color ale with a rather large foamy head with good retention and some lacing. Aroma of sour cherries with some lightly sweet notes and some tannin and oak notes are also discernible. Taste is a very well balance mix between some tart notes, sour cherries with underlying sweetness and some light tannin and oak notes. Body is about average with good carbonation and no alcohol was apparent. Very well done and wouldn't pale in comparison of some good Belgian fruit lambic.

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

Tasted at the Thursday RBSG Events on 7/9/09. This kriek pours a medium reddish color from a 750ml bottle. Small to medium sized white/pinkish foamy head. The aroma is tart and sweet cherries a touch of funk. A medium bodied sour/kriek. The malts are fruity and sweet, semi sweet and tart cheery. The hops are earthy. A little bit of funk, with some bitterness. Interesting. I would like to age this one a while and try it again. Mouthfeel is full. Finish is crisp and tart.

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

2007 Bottle Vintage; Sampled June 2009
A very careful pour still has me ending up with a four finger thick head in my 25cl tulip glass. The head is a full tan colored head. The beer is a murky amber, red color that shows a hazed, deep red color. The aroma is quite cherry laden, with a sweet cherry pie aroma that is noticeable even though I haven’t yet focused on smelling the aroma. The aroma smells a bit thin in its cherry character, though this is clearly the biggest aromatic note. A touch of tannic cherry skin character comes through, but not nearly as richly as a proper sour-cherry varietal character should. There seems to be a touch of tobacco character here as well as a touch of bitter cocoa here as well somehow (though I’ll admit the latter doesn’t make much sense). There is a nice, even rich, slightly sweet cherry character here as well as a finish of spicy oak, and even a tannic woody character.

The beer is fairly light bodied, with a light tartness, and is not sweet at all. The cherry character is a bit weaker even than it is in the aroma. The beer is also not nearly as funky as it would need to be to make up for the lack of cherry character. The second sip is actually a bit richer than the first was with the lactic character being a touch more noticeable. There is a hint of spicy oak in the finish as well as a bit of tobacco and woodiness. My second pour has me noticing a hint of cocoa in the finish as well. This is definitely well carbonated, which tends to lighten this perception of this beer even more; I can’t say that this is really a good thing, as the beer seems a bit thin somehow, it is quaffable though and I wouldn’t quite call it watery.

This was a bit disappointing after the superb Apricot that I had the other night. Strangely I liked this one a lot better during the GABF, it does get a bit better & more integrated as it warms up though. It just seems to have fallen a little short and tastes a bit flat and more muted than I would really like. Still this is not a bad beer, it is even enjoyable, I just find myself thinking how much better this could be in so many different ways.

Sampled GABF 2008
7/3/7/4/16
total: 3.7

This beer has a murky brown color to it and is topped by a frothy, tan colored head. The aroma has a definite cherry note to it and leans toward the sour-cherry side of things. There is a yeast-like note here in the nose that is sort of nutty and there are other aromatics of sweaty cured leather, something like cocoa, grassy grain notes towards the finish, as well as a warm alcohol note. The cherry notes also lean towards sweet-cherry notes, though this is more contributed by the aromatic fruit than by sugar it seems.

The beer tastes of tart, dry cherries up front, but this is only one component of the flavor. There is also a lactic-acid driven lemon-like not up front that moves to a fleshy, full cherry skin flavor that couples with a tannic finish. The tannic note provides a light astringency in the finish, but I can’t quite help coming back to the fresh, complex even, cherry flavor that is not overly dominant, but is so aromatic tasting (if that makes any sense). This is a nice beer, it could be a touch more funky (it showed some promise of this in the aroma) as it is mostly sour, but it is certainly an enjoyable beer.