Verhaeghe Vichtenaar

Brewed by Verhaeghe
Style: Sour Ale
Vichte, West-Vlaanderen, Belgium

Pours reddish with a nice white head. Initial taste is tart apple with a slightly sweet under tone. Very drinkable and refreshing.

Dark, redish brown with a medium tan head. Fruity and malty tones. Some sournesss, carbonation and malt. Medium body with a nice bittersweet finiish.

25cl, from De Hopduvel Gent, complex, yet easy to drink, clear, rocky head, good brew

Picked up a bottle recently, labeled best before 15-02-07...eh. Drinking it anyway. Nice red color and great nose that pops out during the pour. Nice mild sour with a nice smoothness. It’s not tear your face off sour. It is a nice mellow sour that I’d love to be enjoying some BBQ while drinking.

Tried thanks to poperinge. Oak and iron on the nose with a hint of plum. A little bit thin on the pallet with the oak and iron continuing through the flavour, also has a touch of vanilla with the sour plums to finish, nice beer, not as good as rodenbach grand cru but pretty close!

12oz 2007 bottle. About one year old. Pour is a deep red color only when help up to the light. The head is more than thin but is just tight off-white bubbles. No cream or lace. Aroma is a creamy sourness with some subtle earthiness hiding in the background. The flavor is full and smooth, sourness and earthy malts. Well-blended and smooth flavors. Actually I like it better than the New Glarus Enigma I had yesterday. 7/3/9/4/18

Bottle states best before 7/31/08. With a day to spare! And totally by chance. A glassy maroon-amber pour with a sticky foam of beige. Basic aroma of old cherries and flat balsamic vinegar. A brown sugar coating, with a vegetal tone of carrot steamed in red wine vinegar. Some mineral and earthy melon seeds. Chunky and sharp, but decently polished.

Flavor is the dense, cold fruitiness of a watered down table wine. But a good table wine. Dried cherries and raisins lend a bit of tart-sweet, and never much sourness, especially as the mineral earth interjects a metallic and dry simplicity; this doesn’t have a false or phony quality about it, and even if it’s somewhat juvenile it lends a perfectly acceptable drinkable quality to the experience. Accompanying that there’s a pervasive, wholesome nutty sweetness of brown malts, in candied pecans and pistachios. Medium palate is smooth and somewhat rich, with soft carbonation; finish is mild and oak toned, with a touch of grass and plenty of minerals.

To me this is a prime representative of the discrepancy between flemish sour and catch-all sour in the style designations; while this has, if to a lesser degree, the warmth and simplicity of something classical like goudenband, it suffers from its necessary comparison to examples that, while worlds different, are put in the same room to play. Ultimately, I like it, and in some sense it’s a shame that I can’t help but compare it some of these brett-influenced crazies that I like so much more.

330 ml bottle from Bottle Barn BB 28-12-07; Nose is softly tart, mildly oaky, with molasses and nutmeg, finishing with a soy sauce note; clear brown with a medium beige head; flavor is mildly sweet raisins with spices. Finish is slightly sweet, not what I expected of a sour ale! Very mildly sourish!