Bluegrass Black Cherry Lambic

Brewed by Bluegrass Brewing Company
Style: Lambic - Fruit
Louisville, Kentucky USA

750ml bottle
Yet another BBC lambic and yet another major letdown. I do not know if I can stomach the remaining ones in the cellar but will have to at some point. This is not quite as bad as the quad but still worse than anything (even Lindeman’s sugary sweet releases). Stay away.

Aroma / Appearance - Totally flat the body had a strange purple haze. The nose reminded me of bandaids soaked in cheap red wine from a three litre jug.

Flavor / Palate - Almost decent at the start it is palatable for a minute. Tart black cherries then collapse into a watery mess. Everything about it is wrong though the whole is somehow still better than the sum of its parts. This is near the bottom of the barrel for the style - even the Chapeau lambics may be better.

Bottle pours dark amber color with off white head. Aroma was tart fruit and has an off smell I just can’t place. Course mouthfeel. Flavor is off target with this one. There is some tart fruit, but its not right. I can’t help but think there is some sort of infection going on here. Not good.

750 ml bottle shared by Tmoney99. Pours a slightly hazy reddish amber color with very little head. The aroma was tart cherry with a heavy acidic component. The flavor was mainly tart cherries with a woody component. This is strongly acidic which makes the bitterness in the finish a bit odd. I wanted to like this but came away more confused with each drink as it seemed to change for me.

Bottle from Bluegrass. Poured a clear redddish brown color with an average frothy off-white head that mostly diminished with fair lacing. Moderate sour cherry and yeasty aroma. Medium body with a smooth texture and soft carbonation. Medium fruity sour flavor with a medium fruity sour finish of moderate duration. My expectations where met.

7/02/2009: BBC Black Cherry Lambic is very fragrant with lots of tart, sour, acidic cherry bombarding the nose. This reddish-colored brew has an interesting flavor. It starts slightly sweet and turns acidic pretty quickly. The taste brings black cherry pit to mind; it’s just bitter in some weird way. The middle has some sugary caramel malt. The finish seems to have a hint of dark chocolate then becomes sour and very dry. I can’t decide about this beer though. I like, but don’t. Hard to explain, but I know I don’t care for the strange bitterness in it.

25.4 fl. oz. bottle shared by Tmoney99. Thanks Tom! Rating #2 for this beer.

A solid pour into my 25cl tulip glass produces a three-finger thick, tan colored head. The beer is a murky red-amber color that shows a hazy, orange-red, light amber hue. The aroma smells of strawberries and is quite fruity, but not really cherry smelling per se. Actually I can smell both strawberry flesh as well as the piquant seeds in this beer. A backnote of lactic and acetic notes that just barely suggest a tartness here. There seems to be a touch of dusty, musty toasted grain here as well, but all in all this has a fairly mutted aroma and isn’t nearly as distinct as I was expecting.

Nicely tart up front with more lactic than anything, though a bit of acetic sneaks in towards the finish. The flavor definitely has a fruitiness to it, but again it is not distinctive of cherries. In fact it, again, reminds me of strawberries more than anything; it is not distinctly of strawberries as the aroma was, but I can still taste that crunchy strawberry flavor that one gets when you bite into a rip strawberry and its small seeds. The acetic presence is growing on me, or it is becoming more noticeable as time goes on. This is not overly tart, but the acetic notes do add a bite that is not in the usually more lactic focused Lambic style, in fact there may not be too much of lactic presence here in the end. This is fairly light bodied, though it does have a certain viscous slickness to it.

While I might be convinced this was a strawberry sour beer, I am having a hard time seeing this as a fruit beer at all much less a cherry one; it is fairly fruity over all though, but I would hazard a guess that the brewer didn’t use proper sour cherries for this beer as you really need to in order to get a proper chewy cherry character. As with the Nut Brown Lambic I had the other week, this beer is a poor attempt at actually being a Lambic; though it could be a half way decent attempt at a Flemish Red. I like that this beer is quite balanced in its flavors, even if they aren’t quite what I would prefer.