Felix Kriek

Brewed by Verhaeghe
Style: Sour Ale/Wild Ale
Vichte, West-Vlaanderen, Belgium

Serve in Snifter, Tulip, Tumbler

Sharp cherries contract nicely with sweet marzipan nuttiness in the nose. Clear brown body with low off white head that recedes to a partial cover with some lace. Sweet, doughy, dessert-like yeasty flavour shows off cherries and a woody, leafy character with mild finishing bitterness and a low tartness throughout. Medium-light body is somewhat sticky with lively, pointy, fine-bubbled carbonation. Bottle sampled at GBBF 2005.

Just to clear this up, there are two versions of this beer. In 25cl and 3.5% alcohol is currently brewed by Huyghe brewery and is awful. The GBBF 2005 had the classic Felix Oudenaards Kriek, 6% abv, and there are only 75cl versions of this left. Although there was little comment when this brewery closed in 2000, it was just about the last maker of the particular Oudenaards Bruin style, with open coolers, natural infection and wood barrel ageing. They had been told to close by the safety inspectors as their equipment was too old, and in the last days of the brewery they brewed fanatically and stored a lot of beer. Hence limited availability still of the 6% kriek and 5.5% Oud Bruin.

Bottle at GBBF 2005. Glad that Dan cleared up the mystery of this beer because I wasn’t 100% certain I knew which Felix beer we had. Cloudy russet colour, smooth cherry nose, slightly sour and I though slightly chemically taste.

UPDATED: SEP 20, 2006 Bottled GBBF 2005. As Dan says the 1992 vintage in a 75cl bottle. A muddy reddy brown coloured beer with a nice cherry fruit aroma although the age was beginning to tell. The taste was much better with woody oaky sour notes. Some good cherry fruit notes. A very drinkable well brewed beer. (7.3.9.3.15) (3.7)
1975 Vintage - Kulminator- Antwerpen - A dark red coloured beer with a high acidic fruity aroma. The taste is also puckeringly sour and fruity. Wouldn’t necessarily have picked out cherry from amongst the general fruitiness. A touch of marzipan right at the end. Suprisingly I didn’t find this showing its age as much as the 1992 vintage. Maybe it’s in the keeping? (8.3.9.3.17) (4.0). Rating is an avergae of the two.

Bottle at GBBF 05. We had lots of discussion on this, as the bottle we had was a 1992 vintage of the oud kriek, brewed by a different manufacturer to later versions. By all accounts, this is the optimal version, and I certainly enjoyed it. Ruddy, sherry colouring, with a small head. Smells wonderful: sweet, cakey, icing sugar, fruity, marzipan, cherry. Flavour is all of the above, with a small lambic bump near the finish. Predominantly sweet, with only the one noticeable sour moment. Absolutely delicious. Good balance, good flavours. A real highlight.

(Bottle 25 cl) Almost pitch black, not much head and a little low in carbonation. Pronounced sour notes from the base beer. Strong cherry flavour but never overly sweet. Rather nice indeed. 070698

6% on the label. Bottled may 2000. Pink brown and red in the color. The red must have faded away somewhat over the years. Still very much a cherry aroma, cherry sweets especially. Also a cherry flavor, with some notes of walnut, amontillado sherry and wood. Lovely beer, sweet with a touch of citric sourness. Liefmans kriek was better 20 years ago or so, bit thisis (or was) still a very good beer.

Bottle (3.5%)Deep red, murky body. Pink, creamy head, totally diminishing. Excellent lace. Sweet cherry aroma. Moderately sweet initial flavour. Moderately sweet, lightly sour flavour. Not bad. Fortunately the beer isn’t a overall sweet-dominated beer, but still the sweetness is remarkably present.