Review: Cantillon Kriek 100% Lambic Bio

Review: Cantillon Kriek 100% Lambic Bio by Cody La Bière
A belated birthday beer to me thanks to Jonny! I only discovered last week that Cantillon wasn't a style of beer.. but an actual Belgian brewery, just like how I only discovered a few months ago that Kriek wasn't a brewery, but a style! Shows you how much I pay attention to beers, and then again... Cantillon isn't even available in Manitoba. I've had a few of their other beers recently, and they seem pretty damned good.. generally sweet and sour (fruity) and a very good representation of what's good about Belgium.

Appearance: So. Much. Effing. Foam. I let it settle for a minute or so and pour some more beer, it pours a cherry-raspberry red with a soapy rose colour to it, the head almost reminds me of strawberry milk or Pepto bismol, a very fake looking colour. The weird thing about this beer is that not only does it have a cap on it, like most beers, but it also has a cork, so you'll need a corkscrew for this beer - the cork is one of those rubbery corks so it was hard to get it out of the bottle in the first place, the fibers were going everywhere, while the corkscrew didn't make any progress.

Aroma: Standard Belgian Kriek Lambic-style beer, a sour cherry - very much a dessert themed beer we have here. Slight wood aroma to it, as if it was brewed in an old barrel.

Taste: Very tart, very sour. Much more sour/tart than most of the Kriek's I've tasted, so if you're a sour beer fanatic, this is for you. Aside from the sour cherry taste, there's a bit of an oaky presence that's very welcoming. Only a minimal amount of sweetness is coming off the cherries, I'd like it to be a bit sweeter.. but hey.. Krieks are supposed to be sour! It automatically had this taste that only reminds me of the old barn my dad used to have.. not that that's supposed to be a bad thing.

Overall Thoughts: Cantillon's Kriek 100% Lambic Bio is quite a sour/tart beer, quite a presence of cherries, but sour overpowers the sweetness 8:1. One thing that's cool about this beer is that it's an organic beer, which still doesn't seem to be common place in the beer industry, even with the whole organic trend hitting its peak a few years back. Quite a dessert-friendly beer, that is if you like tartiness with beer. It has an ABV of 5.0%, so stronger than most Krieks out there in alcohol, but you wouldn't really notice that as most Krieks are strong on the flavour even at low ABVs anyways. Best served at 12-15C within 10 years of the bottling date.. the bottling date was October 23, 2012.. so it sure didn't live up to 2022! It's in muh belleh now! Now time to eat some more birthday cheesecake..

Santé!

www.cantillon.be/br/3_102

1 comment:

Jonathan Evans said...

LOL. You need to learn how to open a corked bottle. Tis a slow pour for sure. Interesting note this is the first Cantillon I've opened that had a synthetic cork. Also, the colour is anything but fake.

Yes, they are aged in barrels, hence the wood. Age one of these puppies a few years and then tell me fresh is sour ;) As far as I know these guys have always been organic, well before it was a trend. Cantillon is one of THE BENCHMARKs of brewing. Pucker Up!

Happy Birthday Cranky!