5.9/10
—
Appearance 6
Aroma 6
Flavor 7
Texture 4
Overall 5.5
Announced by AB InBev in June, this 'oude' kriek is supposedly an assemblage of several vintages of Belle-Vue Kriek - which I suspect has hardly contained any lambic at all in the past years. Enough to warrant a tasting test, fortunately I didn't have to spend money on this repulsive company other than a coin at Lambiekstoempers' beerfestival, the first to feature this new product. Creamy, densely moussy, off-white head with pinkish tinge over a misty fuchsia-ruby red beer with ruddy hue. Aroma weirdly - but not entirely unsurprisingly - exhibits mostly 'rusty' oxidation, the kind you get when you leave a top-fermented beer in your cellar for much too long and totally different from the noble old lambic effects one gets in a true traditional kriek, making me suspect that they indeed threw old bottles of the - mostly, if not completely - Belle-Vue Kriek together; other impressions include sweet cherries rather than real sour ones, red wine vinegar, lemon juice, sour red apples, iron, white bread slices. Sour flavour alright, in a lemony acidic way, sour cherry effect but somehow feeling less 'real fruit'-like than normal in this style, raw rhubarb, redcurrant and sour apple notes, spritzy carbonation, drying sourness over a wheaty base with a soapy edge but not feeling entirely 'natural', as if ascorbic acid was added; lots of 'rusty iron'-like oxidation of the kind described above, bit metallic, some vague woody tannins in the finish, sourness keeps persistently drying the palate. Nice try - but anyone who knows anything about traditional lambic beers, will immediately notice that there is something wrong with this; it feels and tastes as if old, oxidized bottles of ordinary Belle-Vue Kriek have been dumped in a barrel (or aged on wood chips) and artificial, 'industrial' sourness was added to create the tart, astringent effect the lambic consumer expects from an 'oude kriek'. I have no idea how close I am to the truth with this educated guess, but clearly this is not a true 'oude kriek' in the official sense of the word. I should not act surprised of course, AB InBev, owner of the Belle-Vue brand for many years, must have noticed how traditional unsugared and unpasteurized lambic beers have experienced an immense revival in the past years so it comes as no surprise that they are now trying to cash in on the hype, ironically by pimping a brand that basically invented sugared and pasteurized lambic 'bastardisations'. I wonder how long this product will last: the classic sweet kriek drinker will find it much too sour and the educated 'traditional lambic' drinker will immediately see through AB InBev's cheap masquerade. I am more flabbergastered by the fact that they apparently think this product will be taken seriously by the lambic hype than by the fact that they finally try to extract money out of it. In any case this kriek does not bode well for the geuze version, which is supposed to be a reiteration of the original Sélection Lambic from the nineties, when AB InBev was still "the world's local brewer" Interbrew and - to the surprise of many a lambic lover back then, but admittedly those were still a rarity before the year 2000 - managed to produce a fine 'oude' geuze. I had that one on several occasions and liked it a lot - but my hopes for being able to taste it again in its original quality of flavour are lower than they already were, now that I tasted this grotesque caricature of an 'oude kriek'. Oh well, the proof of the pudding is in the eating, of course, we'll see...
Tried
from Bottle
on 30 Aug 2018
at 19:04