Church-Key The Lactese Falcon

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

Draught. Dark red-brown body with an off-white covering. Parmesan cheese dominates the aroma...really, there is nothing else. It’s not nearly as offensive as the C’est What offering a few weeks back (vomit) but it still doesn’t smell good. The flavour is actually more in line - tart cherries and light metal along with some lingering parmesan cheese. A sample of this is all I need.
Volo.

RE-RATE: Bottle sample at the Brewers Plate gourmet food & beer pairing event. This was the suggested pairing with fish & chips prepared by chef Jamie Kennedy (he’d used the beer in the batter for the fish), so I figured I’d give the beer another chance. Glad I did, because I enjoyed it quite a bit more this time. The strong vomit character I got in my original tasting wasn’t there, and the cheap parmesan cheese notes were replaced with a nice blue cheese. The flavour is a combination of tart cherries, wood, and a mellow blue cheese funkiness. While it’s still noting I could drink a lot of, it’s much more palatable than the first time I tried it. Again, I’m very glad I gave it another chance.

ORIGINAL RATING: Draught sample at C’est What’s 2007 Fall Festival of Craft Breweries. Murky brown, like dirty dishwater. Strong aroma of puke and cheap parmesan cheese. Thin body. Flavour of bad cheese, sour yoghurt, sour fruit, and an odd saltiness in the finish. Sorry, John - normally, I really like your beers, but this one is just wrong. [1/2/3/2/6 - 1.4]

This beer pours to a dark brown body with a wispy tan head. The nose is an immediate scent of blue cheese with a secondary sour malt aroma. The mouth feel is thin and acidic with a mildly sour finish. This is definitely a disappointment from one of the top brewers around.

312 oz draught
8.0% ABV
I tried this beer on October 5, 2007 at "Smokeless Joe’s" in Toronto. The aroma of the beer is blue cheese. The bartender told me it was ’blue cheese meets beer’...I laughed....I sniffed...........and damned if he wasn’t right. The colour of the beer was a reddish brown. The mouthfeel was full and creamy with some mild carbonation. The taste was very similar to the smell. Beer with Blue Cheese. This was my first Flemish sour.....and it may be my last!

Draught. At C’est What Beer thing September 2007. Don’t get me wrong - I love this brewery, a solid producing micro from Eastern Ontario, but ... Well, it certainly looked good - murky cola-brown with a small tan head. But that aroma - consensus was "puke" "vomit" "baby shit" and oddly "Roberta" for some reason - seriously, I wanted to like this, but it stank like acidic parmesan cheese puke. The taste ... welll, also pukey, but for the first half second or so you could taste a nice sour cherry Flemish sour, but then CLANG, down came cheese and vomit ... essentially on a dare I chugged my sampler without holding my nose first, but I regretted that - for several minutes. The body was thick and, thanks to my imagination, seemed chunky - quite an unpleasant feel on the palate, and was sour and acidic not in any good way. Ignore any remotely positive ratings, this is - by far - the worst thing they’ve ever done. Ewww. I think I can still smell that crap. Rerate Oct 21 @ Volo - draught. Mostly acidic cheese, less (but still present) puke. When available in bottle, I will buy a few and try again in a year or more. Still seems like the label should say "Lievre" on it ... Original rating 1/4/3/2/5.

Draught at ’C’est What? Festival of Small Breweries’. By far the most talked about beer at the fest! Pours a murky dark brown with an average size diminishing tan head. Aroma: Holy cow, what is that! Do I like it? I’m honestly not sure. It’s somewhat lactic along with yogurt, sour fruit and, I’m sorry to say, puke -- it goes from awful to O.K. Flavour starts with "Oh, no one wants that!" but then the next sip is "wait, maaaayybe". Again, it’s sour fruit and puke along with some spices and dark malt. Such an oddity, the flavour changes slightly each time. I’m not sure what to rate this puppy, I’m totally on the fence. I know it’s not as bad as the babies at my table made it out to be.

On tap at Cest What
Appearance :brown painted ale with medium mocha crown. Good creamy lace created.
Nose :Sour, cheese with brown malt at back. Hint of sweet staled coffee.4-
Flavour/Palate : Tart sourness with out substance to it. Brown malt does not go well with its sour complexity. Lactic acidic malting. Failed attempt.

<P>October 2007. Draft at Volo. Brown body, small creamy tan head. Rich sweet cheese aroma - Parmesan, light blue cheese, light lactic acidity. (5-6) Lactic sourness throughout the flavour, a bit of the cheese character from the aroma, but not a lot. Muted cherries, light wood like not quite astringent hints of something in the finish that defies a better description. Average palate. Dramatically superior to the sample from the C’est What Festival. This was not to my liking, but it was at least serviceable enough to mostly enjoy a half pint, which is more than I can say about the first crack at it. 6/3/6/3/12 - 3.0 <P>Sept 2007. C’est What Festival of Small Breweries. Possibly the most talked about beer at the festival. Dark brown body wit a smallish beige head (3+). Pungent, extremely funky aroma of cheese - old parmesan with a hint of a mild blue cheese, just a hint of sour dark malt hiding behind the curtain, hint of rancid cherries. In the flavour a brief but glorious glimpse of sour cherries gives hope as to what this could have been before a wave of the same funky, cheesy strange melange of weird flavours overwhelms the proceedings again. Average palate with a prickly mouth puckeringly sour undertone. Thankfully, I didn’t really pick up on the vomit notes indicated by a number of others, though I did see a bit of the "cheese and socks" throughout. Glad to see someone experimenting with this style, but I *really* hope this was an experiment gone wrong rather than the planned result. This beer has done everything the Bible says - even the stuff that contradicts the other stuff! 3/3/4/3/7 - 2.0