I was at my mum’s place when I cracked this beer open to taste it and write it up.
I poured it out, appreciated the gorgeous colour – just a shade pinker than ruby – and took a sniff and a sip. It’s a pretty chilled out beer, with a splash of berry across the tongue and a mild doughiness. Then I took it into the next room, where my mum was watching TV, and offered her a smell.
My mum regularly announces that she hates all kinds of beer. And while I’m fine with people not liking beer, I know most people who say they hate beer have only had a narrow experience of macro lagers. So I like to show people there may be a wider variety of beer than they realise. (Then they can hate it all they like.)
Anyway, this means if I’m in my mum’s proximity with a beer that sits outside her idea of a “normal” beer (pale lager, basically), I’ll usually offer her a smell. And to her credit, she’ll usually have a sip as well.
She sipped this Black Forest Sour, got a thoughtful look on her face, then said unprompted, “I actually don't mind that one. I get the sourness and the bitterness, but it doesn't have the "YECCHHH"* that other ones have. Very refreshing.”
Not that I need to convert her (or anyone), but there’s always something a little satisfying about finding a beer that a self-proclaimed non-beer-drinker likes.
Anyway, I took the beer back from her and went back into the next room to take some more tasting notes. The sourness is slight, and there’s a tiny bit of bitterness. It cuts through humid air like—
“You know what,” my mum called out, “it might sound ridiculous, but it actually tastes a bit like wine. If I close my eyes, it's got the quality of one of those slightly dry wines.”
So I guess this is mostly my mum’s writeup.
Mick Wüst
* Unsure of the spelling of this one. Two “C”s seems unlikely, but one “C” looked very wrong, and three “C”s would be laughable.
