Magic Hat Odd Notion - American Sour Ale (Winter 09)

Formerly brewed at Magic Hat Brewing Company
Style: Sour Ale/Wild Ale
South Burlington, Vermont USA

Serve in Snifter, Tulip, Tumbler

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I’m not a big fan of sour beers, and this is a good example of why. This beer has very little carbonation, and it pours a dark tea color with a thin, light colored head that disappears fast. Virtually no lacing. Very fruity aroma, and a lingering, acrid after taste.

Bottle. Hazy brownish with white head. Aroma is floral with candi sugar, cherry and apple. Flavors of candi sugar, band-aid, cherry and apple. Lactic acidity. Thin body with water mouthfeel and moderate-low carbonation. More infected than sour.

I sat down and rated this *without* first looking up what style it was supposed to be. Dark amber with a small, off-white and fizzy head. Nutty, toffee aroma with slight roast and some earthy peat. At this point, I was guessing this was going to be some sort of malty Scottish-style ale. Moderate-to-high sweet taste, heavy with metallics, that turns moderately sour. OK, not a Scottish ale. Some kind of weird sour ale? At this point, I had to pull up Ratebeer to see what the heck this was. Yep, supposedly a sour ale. A highly carbonated, thin-bodied sweet & sour ale that ended up more like a watery, infected brown ale in the end. Thanks to Narnad for the bottle; now I remember him telling me to enjoy this with a smirk.

This is just bad. To confuse this with proper sour ales, if it meant that you gave up on the style, would be a serious mistake. This takes like a brown ale or something fairly standard that had a terrible infection and went bad, with a vinegar sourness and unappealing mash of malt notes. Sweet/sour, but mostly just "gone off" sour.

Brown color with a white head. Aroma of lemon, fruit, and vanilla. Flavor is largely sour with some sweet vanilla undertones. Different for sure. Not a true sour ale.

Aroma is initially fruit and and faint malts. it has a quickly dissapearing head and has a reddish hue. taste weak and uninspiring. sour came through slightly on the palate. Was expecting a little more.

Sour aroma and sourish taste, mostly malt flavoring with a touch of hops in the background. Oddly refreshing, but not something that I would rate high on my list.

Bottle. Pours a dark amber with a small off-white head. Aroma was slightly sweet/sour with caramel, light fruit and some stale spices. Flavor was sour and slightly acidic with light caramel, tart cherries/apples and was lightly carbonation with a sour and dry finish.

Sour is one of my favorite styles but this one packed too much of a vinegar punch for me to even finish it. That is too bad because many buy variety packs to try new styles and this could turn people away from sours.

What the hell? Dissapointing act from Magic Hat. Really love these guys, and then they gotta go and pull a half ass stunt like this. Pours a slightly amber, reddish colour. Small white head. Aroma is stale. Like they’re trying to get some sourness, but not quite . Taste is wicked mellow. Not super sour,but like i mentioned before. Stale sourness. It was on tap too, so I was pretty jacked up. A taste that was like rotten appel sour. Boo.