3.3

Appearance - 6 | Aroma - 2.5 | Flavor - 2 | Texture - 3 | Overall - 4

New addition to this François Grand Cru brand, and even though the label strangely - and suspicously - fails to mention it, containing some or other fruit syrup and / or colorant. Thick and moussey, plastery lacing, pale lilac-pink, irregularly edged but nicely stable head on a clear ruby red robe with rosy fuchsia tinge. Aroma of red Haribo candy and 'poepegatjes' even after lifting the crown cap for one millimeter, molten industrial strawberry ice cream, grenadine, more strawberry candy (Fruitella-like), candied cherry, white bread, bubblegum, something very faintly green leaf-like and something vaguely dusty. Utterly sweet onset with very dominant artificial strawberry effect - again this industrial pink strawberry ice cream I recall from childhood and Fruitella candy with strawberry flavour; with some stretching of the imagination, some cherry and red apple could be detected, but also in a very sweet and artificial way. Lively carbonation - very lively in fact, like some Coca Cola product, with light-bodied, smooth, slick body; some basic cerealliness lies buried under a heap of teeth-sticking sugars, candyfloss and that sweet industrial strawberry effect, but after that, not much more happens, with the finish remaining sugary sweet, strawberry-flavoured and thinly structured. Clearly another attempt to cash in on that dreadful 'rouge' hype of red candy beers (though in this case, in the lower alcohol range of it) - I have hated red candy my entire life and this 'trend' only irritates me. Monodimensional, cloying and childishly simplistic, even more so than expected. Drain pour for me - so at which audience are these ridiculous, unbeery, idiotically sweet concoctions aimed anyway?