Liefmans Gluhkriek

Brewed by Liefmans (Moortgat)
Style: Fruit Beer
Oudenaarde, Belgium

I drank this one cold. Even then, quite ok. Good aroma of cherries, bit tart. Sweet cherrie taste. Sweet sticky palate. Additional tasting, warm/hot, from tap in Cafe Samson, Nijmegen: Hazy red color, short head. Aroma of medicine, horseblanket (but the real thing), some cherry, disgusting aroma. Sour taste, medicine, bit sweet cherry. Next time i want my Gluhkriek cold, because hot it's just disgusting. I expected it to be excellent after i'd read all those comments, but it's just not my thing. Rating when hot: 1.2.

room temperature-750ml. color is a soft cherry/mahogany and an excellent frothy head. aroma is a very strong mixture of nutmeg and cherries and mustiness. have to say i'm a big fan of the musty quality. flavor is an excellent tart/sweet mixture with cherries and nutmeg both very prominent in the flavor...not as good as quelque chose, but i dont think the two are all that similar..especially with the spiciness of this bastard.

Red color, big frothy head. The beer gushes heavily, I lost about a third of the bottle contents. Cherry and cinnamon aroma and flavor. Sweet, vinous and rather alcoholic. Nice beer, but I prefer the "ordinary" Liefmans kriek. And even more the Liefmans Kriek from the wooden cask they sold in De Beyerd Breda during the Belgian Beer Week in the 80's and early nineties.

Drank it fridge-cool, as I did with its Canadian effigy. Very diffuse head, white with pink-brownish glaze; brown beer with reddish shine, very hazy. Vinous nose, estery, spicy (cloves, cinnamon, cardemoms, ginger), but also something reminscent of cola. Vinous and spicy taste, here the cinnamon and cloves overwhelm the rest. There is a metallic acidity retronasal. Bitterish surrounding, and, of course, cherry aroma all over, but it is a natural-appearing aroma. Good. Acidity even develops some acidburn. Strange. Liefmans is the original, but I've liked the Unibroue better from the moment I tasted it - despite it being sweeter. Both the Liefmans as the Quelque Chose seem to benefit from the cooling - something I never did before with this.

1997, 6 years old, bottle conditioned
Cold. Red-amber color, no head, flat. Very nice cherry aroma, light spices, Porto wine. Less sweet and sirupy than Quelque Chose, very good character, pleasant fruit sourness, wood. Final well balanced between the bitterness, sweetness, the fruits and the spices. Perfect maturation.
Hot. Interesting aroma: cherries, spices, cinchona. It looses the acidity, being less interesting than colder (but still better than Quelque Chose, more character; acidity developing more in the final.

Other Gluhbeers:
<a href=http://www.ratebeer.com/ShowBeer.asp?BeerID=1 Chose
<a href=http://www.ratebeer.com/ShowBeer.asp?BeerID=1 Dragonne

Tastes like my kids' 100% cherry fruit juice with a slight sourness and some nutmeg and cloves. Easy drinking and pleasant; I might use this in place of wassail during the Holiday season if I'm feeling like cherries instead of apples.

Guess what? Its smells like cherries! Guess what again? It tastes like cherries. Seriously though this was very similar to Quelque Chose from Unibroue. Flavor is mainly sweet with some tartness and a little spice. Im not really a fan of fruit beers but I do enjoy these cherry fruit beers alot.

Spicy and peppery while cool - a little less iron and cherry than Quelque Chose has. Cork says 1998 - mellow as heck. Zero head. Quite good, but a super sipper on a hot day during Game 6 of the Stanley Cup finals.