Cascade Cuvée du Jongleur

Brewed by Cascade Brewing @ Raccoon Lodge
Style: Sour Ale
Portland, Oregon USA

750 mL bottle tasted blind on 3/11/10. Pours orange with light cream head that fades quicly. Aroma of vanilla, lemon and orange. Funky tartness with a rich sweet backbone. Tastes like a sour apple jolly rancher. Nice medium body and a great sipper.

Bottle thanks to kmurray (BA)!
Murky red-mahogany, cream head that chills on top for the duration. Nose has heavy berry and grape, light lemon and hay, lactose, light ginger. Flavor is unfortunately a mess, heavy grape sugary tone, wood, and an off-note of dirty barn hay. Given the heavy sugar, reducing the carbonation would help to abate the Faygo Grape comparison, particularly in the long but singularly sugary finish. And it started off so well.

Bottle sampled on 7/3/09: Pours a transparent orange amber with a spotty-lacing white head. Aroma of fresh oaky cherries and light caramely sweetness with a touch of vinous character. Starts with good fullness and light malty sweetness with a nice oaky vinous tartness and cherry fruitiness before a sweettart finish. A nice sour ale.

A: The beer is an interesting muddy reddish color with a fluffy layer of pinkish foam. S: A pleasant lactic tartness is the first aroma that I pick up followed by some red berries and perhaps some faint notes of cherry. The level of funk is (a bit disappointingly) low, but still a great nose on this beer. T: The flavors are solid, but don’t quite live up to the aromas. Again, the lactic tartness is front and center with some nice cherry and oak flavors. M: Despite all the different components and the barrel aging, the body is quite light, but that may be due to the high level of carbonation. D: A really great beer, overall. Nice and tart with a decent amount of complexity. The only thing I felt myself missing was a bit more funk, but still a nice wild ale nonetheless.

Rating from old notes, found while cleaning my kitchen. Bottle. Pours deep red with a brownish/tawny hue. Soft carbonation, thin head, poor lacing. Nose is tart berries and soft acid, a bit muted. Palate is softly sour, tannin, berryish, tasty but a bit dull. Tasty, but not inspired.

750 ml bottle
My contribution to the tasting was this well crafted sour from the West Coast. I hope I can get my hands on more of their releases. Despite the high price (~$20) I think they are worth trying once if only to get a sense of what can be done in a field that is fast becoming crowded with competitors.

Aroma / Appearance - The carbonated maroon body shimmered as the sun began to set. A thin patina of ochre foam looked like the remnants of flour in a cake mixer. Sour cherries scraped over pine boards made me picture this as a toned down La Folie. Sweet and sour at the same time it gets the olfactory juices flowing.

Flavor / Palate - Tasting like a Flanders (no surprise) with the tartness turned up a notch this was easy to drink. Were there not many other choices I would have readily completed the whole bottle myself. It is too sour to finish in a short period of time but if you relax and treat it as a half marathon rather than a 100 yard dash you’ll enjoy yourself.

Dark cherry. Some cough syrup that dominates a bit of the sour and lambic. I had high hopes for this one. Not a let down, but I need that dark cherry to be pulled back on and the lambic to be more pronounced.

Pours a deep dark ruby/cherry red color with burgundy/mahogany edges and a two finger frothy beige head that quickly subsides. Not much in the way of lacing. Tart earthy funk aroma with a strong vinous presence as well as a lot of dark fruit, especially sour dark cherry, vinegar and oaky tannis. Soft carbonation up front that lingers into a slightly vinegary, vinous mothfeel that is a bit flatter and syrupy. Nice balance of tartness and earthy oaky tannis as wel as some dark fruit notes coming from the estery Belgian yeast. Pretty vinous with hints of grape, tart dark cherry, plumand raisin. I cam surprisingly really taste the trpel characteristics of the blend. The ABV is excellently masked making this beer dangerously drinkable. Slightly puckering but not acidic at all. Very good and highly recommended!