Kasteel Kriek

Brewed by Brouwerij Van Honsebrouck
Style: Fruit Beer
Ingelmunster, Belgium

Serve in Flute

Tasted this at the Griffin Trade show 3-15-10 this beer was under the name Kasteel Rouge. Pours a clear crimson color with a pink film. Wow, cherry pie filling sums this beer up perfectly. Its abundant in both flavor and aroma. Super thick, syrupy, and sweet. A great dessert beer to sip on, and it would probably be great with a scoop of ice cream. Doesn’t really taste anything like beer, but it’s still damn tasty.

750 ml. bottle. Bottled on 11/27/07.Pours a fluffy, pink tinged head over a clear, dark ruby red (SRM 25) body......nose is drug store cherry cough syrup, with a bit of cherry brandy......taste is sweet cough syrup to start, then a bit of chocolate, finishing with a slightly tart cherry pie finish, moderately sweet throughout......mouth feel is light to medium, carbonation is medium. The cherry aromas and flavors are dominating. Little else comes through in this two and a half year old bottle. Allowing it to warm does not change the balance much.BJCP 6/3/10/4/7

Bottle. A - Deep crimson, cherry oak color. About average sized bubbly head that is a mix of off-white and red. Disappears pretty fast, but leaves a good lacing. S - Lots of cherry smell, both sweet and tart. Sometimes it smells more like a cherry/cranberry juice and other times more like a cherry candy or Kool-Aid. I keep smelling to try to find more smells, and keep getting a very faint background that seems to have the brown ale smells, but this is quite faint and always gives way to the cherry. T - Tart cherry kick to start off the sip. This then mellows out into a sweeter cherry taste that accompanies the brown ale malts. Along with that finish is an earthy kind of taste with a bit of wood taste and a whisper of vanilla (less than what usually will accompany a woody tasting beer). Throughout the sip, there is a faint, but steady, sourness as well as a vinous taste. Different levels of sweet, sour and tart at different times. Alcohol is very well hidden. M - Medium body with slightly above carbonation. Good amount of sweet stickiness to the beer. D - Depends on how much you like cherries, and how much you like some sweetness in the beer. The sweetness and stickiness hurt drinkability a bit, and I probably wouldn’t want another in a night. However, I would want to drink it again if I was craving something cherry and slightly sweet. Notes: Lots of cherry flavor. I think it would make a good dessert beer (like their Brune). Slightly sweet, but nothing like the overly sweet lambics, and it has enough tart and sour flavors to give it more of a balance and more than one dimension. Seems somewhere between a sweet lambic and a Flemish Red. Good for a sweet and sour/tart cherry kick.

Medication-like aroma. Red-amber color. Tastes like cherry cough syrup.

Bottle tasting at home. Far from the best fruit beer I’ve ever had, but I’ve had a lot worse as well. Pretty much what you expect from a beer chock full of cherries, but I wasn’t very happy with the finish. There was a slight acrid taste that you didn’t pick up in the nose, but detracted from the experience. Worth sharing with your wife, but not with a fellow craft beer lover.

Kasteel Rouge 8, bottle 33 cl, 2010-03-13, Göteborg AR: german kriek icecream, destictive cherries AP: porto red (bownish tones) colored body, dark pinkish deminshing head F: loads of cherry flavours - actually to much, sour but then again sweet, wonder if it’s to old - no should be ok until 08-2011! Nutty (almonds) feeling!

Pours a deep muddy red with a thin pink head leaving little lacing behind. Aroma initially reminded me of cherry cough syrup as I was pouring it. After sitting for a touch, the smell of cherries is extremely pronounced but is intermingled with an interesting aroma of earthiness, maybe even a bit of leather. Strong initial sweetness leads to an interesting full cherry flavor. The sugars are pungently noticeable throughout, but almost more so in the finish. Very sweet indeed. I’m not really picking up anything other than sweet sweet cherries. Meh...too one dimensional and that dimension is just way too sweet.

Empalagosa, golosa, amb un gust de cireres molt i molt intens. No per prendre’n excessivament., però pot combinar bé amb segons que.