250 ml. draft @ Chez Moeder Lambic Fontainas. Lightly hazy golden, vanishing egg-white head. Nose is oddly sweet, vanilla, exotic fruits, guava, sour, oak, light spirit,… Taste is weird alcohol, mineral, sour, oak, mineral quality that almost goes towards salty, oddly alcoholic, guava, candy, exotic fruits, peach, sour, big candy / tequila quality with some alcohol, oak, very strange mix of sweetness, candy, mellow sourness and alcohol, exotic candy, caramel, quite cocktail-like,… Low carbonation, easy to drink despite being oddly boozy, quite cocktail-like, juice,… Almost off-putting on the first sip, it really grew on me, unique. 7 % ABV according to the menu.

Nice! I was the first to rate this beer a year a ago. And looks like I’m first up with this new version! (Muha ha ha ) This is also the first time re-rating beer for me, I usually don’t bother. But this beer should be sufficiently different one from the first version. The original aged 3 months, while this guy apparently went for 509 days (nearly a year and a half, me mathy tells me.) Plus three months conditioning in the bottle, which is more time than my newborn son’s been around. Looking forward to it.
Bottle marked bottled March 5, 2015. Pours inky black with dark tan head that reduces to a thick ring. The nose...oh man... coffee, roasted malts, grapes, chocolate, a little booze, blackberries. The taste...is awesome. Those bugs have really done there work. Smooth tartness of sour grapes, chocolate, coffee, roasted malts, a little sour milk on the finish. That extra time in the barrels has really mellowed out that malty bitterness of the original version of this beer, which was it’s biggest failing. Makes me want to get back on my bike, ride down and get more.
This beer is worth staying up for.
Original rating: Well what do you know. I’m the first to rate a beer. The responsibility, the POWER! Muha ha ha! Anyway... Aroma 9, App 3, Taste 7, Palate 3, Overall 17. Drank at the Brewpub on April the 24th, obviously a little early on the description’s release date. It came in a stemmed wine glass. Looks very much what you would expect from a stout, very dark opaque brown, in this case only about a 1/2 finger of thick foamy tan head. Not a lot of visible carbonation. The nose was very nice, with both chocolate and toasty malts, as well as sour grapes. The taste delivers a nice hit of sour green apples right up front, which overlays the tones of chocolate, lots of roasted malts, with a little must and a undercurrent of oak in the mix. There is a bitterness to the finish that really doesn’t do this brew a favour, and ultimately brought down the score for me. The idea of a sour stout is an interesting one, and a new one for me, not sure it meshes as well as I would have hoped, but try it, it’s well worth it. Thanks Bellwoods.