Heritage Black Currant Rye Lager

The Lure:
A heavy blackcurrant juice spread over a light pea soup. Black grapes and yeast are frightened by the sweetness of it all, and by the lurking DMS of course.

The Festivities:
Mostly sweet candied fruitiness in all its artificial splendor. Low carbonation doesn’t help its drinkability factor, and the ending roastiness really doesn’t merge with the sugary fruit. Yeast bothers.

Transcendence:
The multicoloured cereal aisle at the supermarket.

650 ml bottle courtesy of Tupalev... thanks. Deep copper colour beer with a thick fast-fading off-white head. Sweet fruity aroma, blackcurrent along with some faint tart sourness. As the temperature comes up a bit there are some soft toast/biscuit malt notes. On the taste... gak! Very sweet and sugary, with a hint of light fruit. Some dirty higher alcohols and vegetables mix with an astringent soapy finish. Rapidly becomes cloyingly sweet. Pretty rough.

Reddish amber ale with no head. Chenical currant aroma with spoiled cheese and burned rubber. In mout, chemical sweet fruits, viscous and cloying, with a weird bitterness. Ouch...this is bad. A rip-off at 4.79. LCBO.

Vegetal undertone to the sickly sweet, juicelike fruit aroma. Dark amber-brown body is topped by a low, white, fully diminishing head. Overly sweet with artificial tasting fruit flavour and underlying DMS. Rough though light bitterness in the finish along with some vague spiciness. Light, watery and syrupy with very low carbonation. No thanks. Bottle sampled at the Montreal YEHa’05.

Juice? concentrate? Nice head, grows on you. Bittersweet overall. I think not the real thing, and a lager. Volo Cask Days. Colour for some points. Some rye, but not prominent.

Mineral hop aroma, slightly buttery nose. Neat amber-red looking beer with good white crown on top . Sweet berry , white sugar , rather light bodied . Very sweet fruitiness . Rye shows late as the sample warms up .

Draught (cask). At Volo Cask Days 2005. Didn’t quite know what to make of this one. Poured hazy mahogany with visible white floaties, with a huge (for cask) lasting off-white head. Nose is very sour, black current / raspberry jam, other tart fruit juices, some grains; interesting, but still not sure what to make of it. Taste was lighly alcoholic, the berryfruit seemed a tad stale, the grain (rye?) was more prounounced, but this was still quite sour. Mouthfeel was acidic and almost syrupy - a fair amount going on. By the end of my half-pint sample I determined I liked it okay, but would like to try it again to see how much.

Bottle. Ruby-pink tinged brown body with a small beige head, decent lacing. Fruity, currant - hint of syrupy not quite cough syrupy sweet notes. Fairly bland malt sweetness in the middle, very light fruit lingers very mildly. Average palate. Not great, but I think this one probably depends greatly on how much you like the flavour of currants.