Bacchus Nitro Kriekenbier - Cherry Beer
Brouwerij Vanhonsebrouck in Emelgem, West Flanders, Belgium 🇧🇪
Fruit Beer Regular|
Score
6.28
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Appearance - 8 | Aroma - 7 | Flavor - 7 | Texture - 6 | Overall - 7
Sample at the July PS Belgian Tasting Part 2, 7/13/24. Clear red, medium tan head, average retention. Aroma of toffee, vinegar, cherry. Taste is cherry, vinegar, toffee. Simple.
Appearance - 8 | Aroma - 7 | Flavor - 7 | Texture - 8 | Overall - 7
The aroma is really just sweet cherry. Flavors turn more to pie cherry, a little more sweet than tart with some malt. Good carbonation and body. Finish follows flavors. Not bad not great.
Appearance - 6 | Aroma - 4.5 | Flavor - 2 | Texture - 3 | Overall - 2.5
Van Honsebrouck has recently been putting most of their core beers in nitro cans, including Bacchus Kriekenbier; if the nitro can versions of the Kasteel range are separate entries here, then I guess the same rule should be applied to the Bacchus fruit beers as well, even if there is probably no other difference with the original bottled versions than the mere use of nitrogen. To be shaken three times before opening - and by doing so, difficult to open without foam pushing itself out of the can... Anyways: thick and dense, irregularly but tightly lacing, pale beige head with vague pinkish tone, sitting firmly on a crystal clear, dark burgundy brown beer with bright ruby red glow. Aroma of cherries in a candied way, Haribo's Happy-Cola ('colaflesjes') candy, winegums, Fanta Red, molten brown sugar, cough syrup and Wycam's 'Borstbollen', hints of old brown bread, dust, polyester, Roosvicée and treacle. Very sweet onset, candied cherries drenched in Coca Cola with again that Happy-Cola candy association, brown sugar, blackberry jam perhaps and forest fruit extracts as used in cosmetic products, soft carb with creamy mouthfeel as is to be expected from a nitro beer; lots of artificial, lemonade-like sugariness sticking to the teeth, syrupy as in cough syrup, while - other than a slender cerealliness and perhaps a very vague hint at breadiness - malts are difficult to find. An ascorbic, again lemonade-like sourness runs through the whole, but certainly not 'true' cherry acidity and hardly (if any) lactic acidity; ends with sugar eating at the enamel of the teeth and sticking to the throat, with the Happy-Cola candy flavour being retained till the last drop, drenched in a very artificial 'cherry' flavour. I remember the original Bacchus being a credible - if somewhat run-of-the-mill - 'oud bruin', a Rodenbach epigone so to speak (and not even subtly so - see the name, to begin with), with its derived fruit versions being obviously sweetened but still more or less recognizably 'natural', but I haven't had any of those in many years and if this is what they have become meanwhile, then I should be glad I forgot all about them. This is like liquid cola bottle and candied cherry candy, very un-beery and the 'oud bruin kriek' equivalent of the overly sweet fruit lambics that popped up out of nothing a decade or two ago (remember Belle-Vue Kriek Extra, if you dare). Alcopop for... well, for who? Not for me, in any case. It is disgusting how 'platcommercieel' Van Honsebrouck has become and how disrespectful they treat the traditions and marketing trends they built upon - or took advantage of to make money from, otherwise put. And why all these nitro cans anyway?...