Oud Beersel Oude Kriek

Brewed by Brouwerij Oud Beersel
Style: Lambic - Fruit
Beersel, Belgium

Rating #900 (and a fine choice for that milestone) - Pours reddish / copper with a pink head. The aroma is very sharp and tart with red and sour cherries, wild yeast and nice overall sourness. Fairly thin body that is sharp and crisp with a moderate amount of semi-sharp carbonation. Taste starts with a sharp gueze taste that has barnyard earthiness. Then some comes some sour cherries and light vinegar - very clean and refreshing. The finish has a tart grainy taste with some smoothness, but is short lived. Big thumbs up for this very nice fruit lambic.
Rerate - numbers only, notes still valid.

Bottled at the Belgian Embassy in Oslo. (37,5cl corked bottle, served by the brewer of Oud Beersel.) A clear, candy-red beer with a pink head. A quite weak and a bit boring aroma with cherries leads to flavors of cherries, and both sourness and sweetness. It’s quite balanced and has an astringent and sligjtly warming mouthfeel. The finish is long, and lightly sweet. A quite nice beer. (070103)

Bottled. Clear brown in clour. Creamy red/brown head, minor lacings. The aroma is fresh and teasing. A hint of the promised lan ;) A sourness with hints of cherries. The flavour is dry and sour. You get the cherry flavour inthe end. The aftertaste is dry...

My first "oude" kriek. Really strange experience. Nice muddy red is perhaps the only thing you can guess from there’s cherries in. Very vinegary, fruity, sour of course, a bit too complex for me to understand, but nice and interesting afterall.

Bottled (Thanks mabjork!). Murky reddish brown colour with big pinkish head. Aroma is sour cherries and earth. Earty and very sour hints in the flavour, the cherries come stronger in the finish and aftertaste.

Muddy red beer with a small (but lasting) pink head. It has more barnyard-hay-earth-leather in the nose than cherry, which to me is a good sign, but it isn’t very intense. Tart acidic flavour with cherries and grapefruit. I don’t recognize the description below, I think this is quite far from the winegum krieks I know.

375ml bottle, bought at ZBF, best before 26 September 2026. So this is the first batch (I believe) entirely made by Gert and Roland since they acquired the old brewery in 2006. And its great to see the place back in action again, although it will be few years before things are really back in full swing. And I think there’s an element of work-in-progress about this beer. It has all that you’d expect from a traditional kriek but didn’t seem as full on funky as I remember Oud Beersel being in the past. Many might prefer the, almost refined, sharp wine-gum fruit and gentle barnyard aroma to an unrestrained manure and cheese cocktail. But I favour the wilder, up to your ankles in cow dung, approach. There’s bags of fruit in the flavour. Tart cherries of course. But there are hints at other fruits such as gooseberries and grapes too. Finishes acidic but not raspingly so. The mouthfeel is very spritzy. Perhaps too spritzy. Some further bottle age might sort that out, but I’m ashamed to say I couldn’t wait. A classy and controlled kriek but I’m sure there’s more to come.

Pours red with a nice pinkish head of full duration. The aroma has sour cherries and some slight barnyard qualities. Flavor has a sweet and sour cherry at the forefront with an acidic background.