Tap at Dno Pytle at the Raven TTO. Deep burgundy pour, an off-white head. Nose is big funk, barnyard, some woody notes and refreshing cherries. Taste is lightly boozy sweetness and funk upfront, with a touch of wood, and then there’s a light sourness and tart fruity notes, a pleasant spicyness to it as well. Closes with a long lasting fruity and funky finish, has medium to full body and soft carbonation. Tasty.

Bottle 0.75l from our archive, almost four years aged. Almost clear, red colored. AROMA- nicely sour cherry, red wine, plums, sour, lightly funky. FLAVOR- slightly sweet, moderately sour and tart, the same as aroma. Fuller to full bodied. Perfectly aged. This is why I like beer...

Red color with small pinkish head. Aroma of cherries, lot of cherries. Taste, nice sourness with cherries, light medicinal notes, alcohol is evident. Nice one.

Collaboration between two of the new generation Czech craft breweries, one of which (Wild Creatures) being the first in the Czech Republic to experiment with sour ales and spontaneous fermentation; 75 cl bottle at Wild in Groningen generously shared by the brewer, as it wasn’t on the ‘official’ list apparently. This beer, the fourth in a series by Raven but the first one of those involving Wild Creatures, applies the ‘spontaneous’ yeast as used in Wild Creatures’ Meditation, is then further aged in red wine barrels and finally enriched with sour cherries (a local variety called ‘Fanal’ to be precise); seems to be a very limited brew which is highly sought after among Czech beer geeks, from what I came to understand. Pale pink-coloured, open, thin and loose head on a lightly hazy vermillion red beer with deeper cherry red blush. Aroma of fresh sour cherries indeed and a lot of them, redcurrant, raspberry vinegar, green walnuts, grape skin, minerals, artisanal cider, old oak wood touch, fruit yoghurt. Brightly fruity onset, very acidic in a very fruity way, clearly brimming with sour cherry juiciness, drying but in a refreshing, non-puckering way; refreshing minerally effects at the sides, supple bready body, soaked in relatively soft yet adequately tart and generous fruitiness, with a lovely ‘fleshy’ effect from the cherries; ends with this bright red fruitiness, remaining very focused and quite clean, but not without complexity, added by soft woody and cherry skin tannins and lactic bacterial effects. A beautifully constructed, very elegant fruit sour indeed, I completely understand if this is indeed a local hype to a certain degree – but it does not quite show the depth and complexity of the top Belgian cherry lambics, in my opinion.

Tap at Dno pytle. Assertively lactic, yogurty. Loads of sour cherries too and by loads I mean loads. Genuinely finishes with a raw natural sour cherry taste. Very well balanced, very easy drinking. The overall complexity is not too much, not too little. Great!