Church-Key The Lactese Falcon

Brewed by Church-Key Brewing
Style: Sour Ale
Pethericks Corners, Canada

pours mahogany with a medium tan head. Aroma is blue cheese and vinegary sourness. Pretty funky aroma. The flavour in the front is actually pretty nice. Good tart sourness, some very dry white wine/green grape and maybe over ripe cherries combining. Then there passes a funky cheese and something that finishes almost bile like and lingering that forces you to take another sip to get back to that tart fruitiness. The more you drink, the more you get accustomed to it and the cheese and funk flavours pass by much more quickly than the initial impression. Barely a hint of alc in there. Certainly interesting, and definitely not for everyone. So-so sour. It is almost unfair to the beer to rate this on less than 12oz samples, as it does grow on you a bit as you drink. Mine was the 22oz bomber and I finished the entire thing, eventually.

Bottle shared with pfriesen. This is a fairly dark reddish brown colour with very little head or carbonation. The aromas and flavours are layered and fairly complex, but not pleasant at all. The aroma is very lactic, full of awful funky cheese with plenty of fermenting grapes. I taste a whole lot more funky cheese, but more spoiled than nicely fermented and stinky. There’s more of that terrible grape flavour, some dark fruit, wood. Not a keeper. Despite all this, thanks all the same to Peter for sharing!

Bottle from Tim via RadioMGB. Church Key makes some very good beers but this is not one of them. The aroma and flavor was truly offensive. Dark chestnut body, tan head. Nose is blue cheese, honey malt. Flavor is bitter blue cheese, rotten fish, sweet malt, some sort of chicken liver pate (Seriously) I appreciate the attempt to make a sour beer, but a brewery should dump a beer when it turns out as poorly as this one did.

Deep crimson colour with a very bubbly tan head. Intersting scent. Bready with a touch of spice. Tons of flavour. Actually too much. Overpowering. Tates like old aged chedder. Very sour aftertastes. Very unique and different. Not quite sure what I think of this one.

Bomber from the brewery, served in my very nice Church Key Snifter! I"m assuming this beer is roughly 10-12 months old. VERY dark pour, just the slightest bit of light comes through the DARk ruby color, just enough to let me know this isnt black. A nice full beige head, that lasts, and leaves a nice lacing. Ok, there is that notorious cheese aroma. Some provolone, some danish blue cheese, but once you get past the cheezy funk, there are some berries in there, and a touch of mollasses. Flavour is funky! Definetly the blue cheese, funk, but it’s not that bad, there is some nice sour apple, and some tangy berries. Leaves a nice twang in my mouth. This isnt that bad. I think the ageing in the bottle helped.

A deep dark brown ale, veering on porter colour, with a thick moka head. Smells of Oka cheese, bleu, with light tracle and fruits. In mout, a really sour and astringent beer, with unpleasant cheese notes, very lactic (as the name implies), a bit of rubber and organic materil. I like sour beers but this one is....uacala!!! Bottle from Probstk, bought at brewery... 10$/bomber.

Bottle-Pours a murky deep brown with little carbonation. Nose is of fruit (sour apples and grapes) and funky blue cheese with a bit of earthy woody components. Tart, sour grapes flavour with wood and blue cheese with some sharp manchego cheese finish. Acidic and medium bodied. Tough to place as I enjoed the concept and even the cheese components at time, but I really can’t see myself drinking much of this at any one time.

Aroma is Parmesan! WTF?! Dark brown, red at the edges. Taste begins with a sour/tart, fruitiness, then somehow there is that cheesy aftertaste? I love cheese as much as the next person, I even tried this on another occasion, it’s just not a very good rendition of a Flanders Brown. Thanks for trying.