Rodenbach Alexander

Formerly brewed at Brouwerij Rodenbach (Palm)
Style: Sour Ale
Roeselare, Belgium

Thanks to goldtwins for a bottle of this. I live ina college town with no good beer bars, and as most of you would guess I do not enjoy "chugging swill" that they serve at the bars. So what was my solution? I smuggled a 1990 something (not sure of the vintage) bottle of this wonderful elixir into one of the crappiest little bars that only serve BMC. Man was this beer awesome! The aroma mostly a vinegar/balsmic vinegar with some cherries and a little oak...but it was kinda hard to tell since it was so smoking in the bar. The flavor is what really did me in with this beer. It was outstanding! Most flemish sours I have had are a little too puckering sour, but this one was just perfect with a little touch of sour, some oak, lots of cherries and even a little grape juice flavor...maybe reminiscent of a good wine? It was the perfect meld of sweet and sour without either one dominating the other. This stuff was great. My mouth was watering for another sip every time I finished taking a taste of it. I WANT CASES OF THIS STUFF!

Amazing flavor. This is one of the best I’ve had. Bottled. Muddy brown color with a nice medium palate. The first aroma is a sour cherry fruit and the taste is the same. Very good cherry and fruit tartness- perfect tartness, not the pucker up unable to drink kind. Wonderful flavor. It was a pleasure drinking this beer.

#700 - Bottle shared by the South FL crew. HUGE thanks! Vintage 1989. Poured a murky red/brown. Nose is ripe fruits, fig, grapes, over-ripe cherry, some earthy wood, lactic sourness, funk, basement, musty and vinegary. Flavor was insane! So complex. Ripe fruit, tart cherries, sweet malt, burnt sugars, cinnamon, wood, musty earthy cellar, oxidation, tart acidity, apple cider vinegar, fig, and prune. Unreal!

A HUGE thanks to beerguy101 who was kind enough to supply me with the last known bottle of his in existence. This beers pours a fairly cloudy, murky ambery color with a light white head, moderate sized lacing, and small yeasty chunks in the glass, though few and far between. The aroma is funky sour with grapes, vinous notes, oak, wood, cheese, alcohol and holy schmoly...LOTS of cherries..sweet sweet cherries. The flavor is, as should be no surprise...SWEET sweet cherries with a remarkably smooth mouthfeel. That is what really got me most about this beer was the absurdly silky mouthfeel for a flemish sour ale. Prickling carbonation in mid-sip followed by a tart sweet and sour finish. Cherries, fruits, nectarines, hay....an outstandingly aged beer. This is the pinnacle of flemish sours...I honestly don’t see how this could be outdone.

Ok, I’m still hording four precious bottles of this wonderful elixir, waiting for the opportunity to take a yeast sample for the development of some wonderful brew. Beautiful sourness, and in 2002, a significant reduction in residual sweetness - but that sour cherry flavor and aroma still retains. A beer to mourn the loss of.

Dark red color with thin head. Aroma of yeast, cherries and sour (vinegar?). Oak, sour cherry and apple taste. This stuff is just simply fantastic. Rerated. Now that I’ve had more than a few of these, I can honestly say this is awesome.

Beer pours dark reddish brown. Decent sized head that diminishes quickly, aroma of sour cherries in the pour. Sweet cherry, but not cloying. Oak and funky sour push through the cherry sweetness for a finish that has seldom tasted better from this humble rater. Just a perfect balance of sweet and sour. RIght in the middle of Cantillon and Lindemans. A sad thing they do not produce this nearly perfect beverage.

When I entered De Heeren van Liedekercke, I knew what I wanted. I sat down with the beer list, to be polite, examined it rapidly noticing that the object of my desire was nowhere to be found, got up again, walked to the bar with a knowing air and asked if the Rodenbach Alexander was available. The barmaid, whom I later found out to be the co-owner Jessi, smiled and said she would check the cellar. She reappeared with a radiant expression carefully holding the lower neck of the bottle in one hand, and between the thumb and index of the other, a molted face of its label. Clasping my hands in assuagement, I returned to my seat and was delivered in its congruous wide-mouthed snifter, the beer, along with its bottle and the discarded part of its gold-trimmed label. The paper seemed to disintegrate with a mere poke, but barring the dust and cobwebs its colors were still vivid, 14 years after bottling.

Thick and crystalline, the liquid glowed of a cherry wood color carved like a gem in its orbicular glass. A thin layer of off-white cream produced burbling bubbles with fantastic adhesion. It takes one brief sniff to realize the grandeur of Rodenbach’s magnum opus. A single inhalation however, would be torture beyond the most painful methods. In a background of dusty garret scents, freshly baked cherry pie appears with a sweet eruption of toffee, brown sugar and cinnamon. The candy-like, almost Twizzleresque cherry aroma is sustained by a contrastingly natural sensation added to the slight twang of apple and oak. Further complexity emerges from the weathered ambience lent by dry Parmesan cheese and whole wheat bread. It takes a significant effort to properly appreciate such a heavenly aroma without succumbing to the temptation of absorbing it in one big gulp. Inevitably, I take a sip, and I’m beyond any utopia. The texture appears first in all its velvety glory, smooth, soft and sweet; the deflated carbonation renders this nectar above any avatar of beer while its sticky but dry cherry sourness coats the palate and mind assiduously, lingering even as I write this review weeks after the encounter. The wet sweetness of caramel and brown sugar is flawlessly balanced with the fruit and vanilla oak flavors. There’s a primal aspect about this beer that strikes me in its coalescing complexity, an unusually perfect equilibrium that retains genuine identity. This beer transcends all the others I’ve had - why, oh why, did Rodenbach stop?