Sweet-Sour / Red Series 2014

From bottle at Bierfestival Groningen 2018. Aroma is tart and sweet cherries with raspberries, red berries, and sugary notes. Flavour is tart, moderate sour and sweet. Medium bodied. A bit more sweet than I like, but overall certainly enjoyable.

April fun at Ratebeer Odense. Dark red with a small white head. Aroma of red berries with a dusty note. Dry and tart berry flavour..

Bottle @ Ratebeer Odense Spring, 2024. Pours Red amber with bubbles on top. 2014 Vintage. Youghurty and cherries. Strawberries youghurt. Stones. Multi frucht berries. Slightly off. Slightly oxidized too.

Bottle at home. Clear red with a very brief pinkish head. Jammy cherries, malty, some raspberries lingering. Medium tart, but great balanced intensity in fruit/funk. Lacks a little bit of depth and complexity but overall a fine aged fruit lambic.

Bottle 1297 of 3800. Ruby red color. Cherry, oak, cherry yoghurt and almond in the aroma. Sweet flavor, next to the fruity sourness. Cherry youghurt. Hints of cherry pits. A very nice kriek.

From bottle at home. Almost clear dark red burgundy color with pinkish head. Malty and yeasty aroma, sweet and tart fruity, berries, vinous, balsamic notes. Sweet in the beginning then sour and then sweet and sour. Medium oily body with soft carbonation.

Cherry and raspberry lambic made from a blend of lambics De Troch, between one and three years old; vintage bottle (number 1339 of 3800) of four years old now, almost a year past its "best before" date. Comes from a 37.5 cl bottle with both crown cap and cork. Made - along with a geuze - by BIIR, a company founded by two Barcelona hobby brewers and the Belgian brewer Gunther Bensch, who is also the guy behind the Montaigu brewery in Belgium. Creamy, bit irregular, lightly lacing, pale 'off-pinkish' head, needing a bit of forcing to develop and instantly opening in the middle, initially quite well-retaining around the edge as a thick moussy ring but then eventually completely gone; lightly hazy, very deep glowing ruby red robe with coppery hue, but murky with brownish edges after adding the sediment, like the last content of a decades-old bottle of red wine. Aroma of old sweetened fruit 'lambic', including quite outspoken rust-like oxidation; this oxidation does not yet overrule everything, but is already strong enough to clash with the other features - which include black, ripe, sweet cherries much more than the sour cherries traditionally used in lambic, raspberry jam, sweet tomatoes, ruby port, dusty cupboards, old lemon peel, strawberry wine, piles of old paper, borscht or cold beetroot soup, ripe brambleberry juice, stale armpit sweat, even something burnt rubber-like, probably related to age. Evidently hugely fruity onset, even if the fruitiness has problably lost some of its colour already; a sour edge is certainly there, but other than that, the main flavour here is clearly sweet - very much on the foreground and even sticking a bit to the teeth, making it hard to believe that no additional sugars were added like the label claims. Again ripe sweet cherries, much more common in Belgium nowadays than sour ones, spring to mind: this tastes exactly like the sweet cherry liqueur my grandmother used to make from actual ripe cherries many years ago; this beer was clearly made with such (very) sweet cherries rather than sour ones, which are two different plant species to begin with but misleadingly both called 'cherry' in English, yet not so in Dutch. A slight lemony and very subtly vinegary accent at the sides of this black cherry juice sweetness reminds of the fact that lambic was used, a fact that becomes a bit more clear in the end; through an only very softly carbonated, smooth and supple, cereally body very heavily soaked in this black cherry sweetness as well as indeed homemade raspberry jam (rather than actual fresh raspberries), the finish does add some woody tannins and yeasty earthiness, with the sourness now finally becoming a bit more outspoken. Thanks to the tannins and the basic lambic tartness buried underneath but now coming to the surface, the finish, even if the sugars keep sticking to the teeth a bit, manages to end relatively dry, or at least drier than I was expecting based on the first sip. Clearly note the raspberry plus sour cherry ('kriek') lambic I was hoping for: this is more like a very soft, 'malse' lambic so heavily laden with sweet cherries ('kers) and raspberries that it becomes alcoholic sweet cherry juice more than anything else. Very strange and unique in that sense, reminds me a bit of a few of those weird concoctions OWA made with the same De Troch lambic, but other flavourings. The fact that it brought back memories of artisanal, homemade, alcoholised cherry beverages I remember from my grandmother - and which I tried to imitate myself on several occasions a long time ago - does add a bit to the overall experience for me personally, but as a lambic, this clearly underachieves, even taking its age into account. I'd rather recommend this - if you can still find it and don't mind the fact that it has passed its "best before" date - as a kind of 'compromise cherry lambic', a bit like Boon's regular Kriek, but there is no way this product was not sweetened with additive sugars on top of the sweet cherry's and raspberry's own fructose, I simply cannot believe that. Point off for lying, I'm almost inclined to say. Difficult one to judge!

Sweet!