Caldera Erotic Exotic

Brewed by Caldera Brewing Company
Style: Fruit Beer
Ashland, Oregon USA

Pours orange in color, great clearity, with a smooth white head. Nose was a wild blend of tropical fruits, kinda sweet jolly rancher flavor mixed with some fruit shampoo. Fruit flavor comes off nice at first, but finishes funky and cloying. This beer was sweet and needed a way to balance it out more, needed tartness or sourness or something. The fruits just seemed to get stale and muted in the finish and I didn’t want to finish the glass.

Tap at Oregon Brewers fest Dinner. Funked out fruit aroma. Not very enticing. Glass wasn’t rinsed well, but still this failed to impress. Passion fruit is there but fails to blend and play nicely. Not that great.

(Draft: Horse Brass Pub in Portland, OR) Uhm, hmm, I hate to say this, but this beer smells like a gentleman’s urinal, to borrow a phrase from a slightly more famous beer reviewer. I have to hope that there is something wrong with this keg because this smells atrocious. It also tastes a little like soured fruit, as in rotten, not sour/tart. Fresh passion fruit (eaten right out of the shell) is one of my absolute favorite flavors, and I love the tartness, but this beer doesn’t really come close to that. It’s likely that the odor is just killing off anything good in the flavor. It’s also fairly fruity in the aroma, and somewhat spicy, but it’s so hard to get past the urinal smell, I really don’t think I can drink any more of this. Although, I’m finding that if I hold my nose, the flavor is much better and actually does taste fruity and tropical, but I can’t grade on that potential. It’s light bodied, pale golden in color, clear, and topped by a small ring of white head that leaves no lacing. The clarity does surprise me since they’ve added passion fruit puree to this beer. Anyway, this is all I can drink. I hope to try this again when a new batch is brewed next summer.