Schaarbeekse Oude Kriek Lambic
Mort Subite in Kobbegem, Flemish Brabant, Belgium 🇧🇪
Lambic Style - Kriek Regular|
Score
7.49
|
|
Appearance - 10 | Aroma - 8 | Flavor - 9 | Texture - 8 | Overall - 9
Crimson, well-carbonated beer under a medium, pitting-in vivid pink head. Nice, but yet restrained sour cherry nose, natural fruit, old wood. Dry-ish to dry, tannine and fruitacid-rich beer, again clearly sour cherries. Lactic acid; background has something complex-perfumey-smoked, absolutely not wrong. Feels very spritzy, dry, even dry-out effect, refreshing. Very nice try. After propagating the colours of the Kelleriis cherry for decades, MS turns towards the disdained Schaarbeekse... as all the others have done already. Wondering where all those trees are growing, all at once...
Alengrin (11561) reviewed Schaarbeekse Oude Kriek Lambic from Mort Subite 6 years ago
Appearance - 8 | Aroma - 8 | Flavor - 8 | Texture - 6 | Overall - 7
Heineken, owner of the Mort Subite brand through Alken-Maes, must have felt the old lambic beers have been enjoying an unprecedented revival in recent years and, like AB InBev trying to upgrade the Belle-Vue brand with so-called 'oude' versions, has now dipped a toe in the lambic pool with this attempted 'Schaarbeekse' version of Mort Subite Oude Kriek. Bottle (37.5 cl) from a Colruyt supermarket in Ghent. Medium thick, brightly and purely pink, mousy head, breaking and dissipating but retaining as a thin ring, over a deep hazy ruby red beer with a darker fuchsia tinge. Aroma of indeed cherry juice with a lot of 'fleshiness' one could theoretically associate with the Schaarbeekse variety, cherry jam, almond or even vague marzipan, lime flesh, soggy bread, stewed plum, cooked apple, soaking wet wood logs, light red Haribo candy note, dry hay, chlorine. Rounded, strangely 'cleanish' sourness in the onset, lots of cherry juice acidity, juicy and lime-like but tempered by a subtle hint of clearly added, vaguely 'background' sugary sweetness which fortunately does not overpower; slick wheaty and lightly bready base, lively carbonation, with the sour cherry juice and lime-like effect continuing; hayish aspect for sure, but none of the natural 'funky' Brett effects found in more traditionally made lambics. The woodiness in the end is almost almond-like, faintly vanilla-ish, as if wood in some or other form was added later on in the production process rather than a deeply integrated ingredient. Refreshing sourness goes on till the very end, not harshly puckering anywhere but at a very 'drinkable' level, though doubtlessly the regular sweet Mort Subite Kriek consumer will be unable to cope with it. A dry, dim, earthy hop bitterish touch appears very late, after swallowing even. All things considered - among which the fact that no coolship is used in the production of the Mort Subite lambics and the fact that this is clearly less deeply complex than more traditionally made examples - this is not a bad effort at all, remaining very drinkable with a certain degree of complexity that I frankly was not expecting. Refreshing, sour at an accessible level due to that pinch of added sweetness, I was expecting much worse from this brand, even if I will probably not buy a second bottle.