Cherry Chouffe
(has 1 batch)

A ticker's gotta tick I suppose, so it was just a matter of time before this new addition to the Chouffe range reached me - let's get this over with. Thick and frothy, pale pink-tinged off-white, lightly lacing, moussy head over a clear, deep and dark ruby red beer with vermillion hue. Aroma of red Haribo candy, bubblegum, wet dog, a lot of 'kriekenjenever', grenadine, raw white sugars, some red 'drop', candied red apple, soggy bread, Fanta of some kind, spoiled red beetroot (especially when adding the sediment), cooled down Glühwein (including the clove and cinnamon notes), honey, moldy old bread, abbey cheese sweating as it is warming up, stewed rhubarb, egg yolk, liquorice, pink frosting on top of a cupcake, very faint hint of dried bitter herb leaves - in all, unattractive and carnavalesque as expected, but less exuberantly so than feared. Starts with bubblegum and sticky red candy sweetness (a flavour I've been holding a deep grudge against since childhood), glossy red toffee apple all around but with a sourish cherry juice or red apple peel note underneath but still very sugary, lemonade-like and sticky enough to put me off. Quite sharpish carbonation, slick and slippery mouthfeel, not capable of hiding the disgusting sugar stickiness that eats the enamel off my teeth and dominates a slick cereally malt body in which the basic features of the original Mc Chouffe are mercilessly eliminated. Ends more or less like it began: sticky red candy, cloying but its cloyingness being more or less countered by a dim, almost ascorbic acid- and thus lemonade-like sourness on the one hand and a very careful, late and brief earthy hop bitterish note on the other hand; it is, however, that horrible red candy stickiness and 'plasticness' that remains longer than anything else, even when the gin-like afterglow of alcohol comes in. After swallowing, all I can taste is 'alcoholized' red candy with a wet dog-like note to it, as well as something earthy (beetroot), but vaguely so; sugar sticks to my teeth and frankly I cannot finish this, so it ends up as drain pour. Here we are again: Moortgat, the owner of this brewery, must have gotten wind of the popularity of overly sweet, boozy 'red candy beers' in northern 'Francophonia' and this is its logical consequence. This is just an extension of those horribly super-sweet krieks that emerged at the turn of this century - taken to its logical extremes: a certain audience likes sticky 'red' sweet as well as alcohol, so why not jump to the occasion if money can be made out of it. Horrible concoction, but admittedly a tad less horrible than e.g. Delirium Red or La Gauloise Fruits Rouges, to name a few. Which does not mean that this is not horrible - I passionately hate this kind of beer not just for its ghastly taste, but also for its commercial concept, and will never cease to fulminate against it. This is Belgian beer culture at its very lowest. I hate this kind of red bubblegum beers so incredibly much - yet I have to weigh this one against its brethren, and I hate to admit it, but this is not the single worst in its kind, with still some vague McChouffe 'beeriness' buried under this massive amount of sweetness and artificiality.