Silflay Hraka

One of a member of my favorite style, the Belgian Red.

Vichtenaar Flemish Ale
It is a style known as a Flemish, or Flanders, red ale, originating in the northern Belgium region that is primarily Dutch speaking. The style is very different from lambic, with none of the earthiness or mustiness that can be part of that style.

Vichtenaar is sweet, sour, winey, oakey and fruity all at once, with the flavors battling for supremacy, but no clear winner emerging.

Vichtenaar has medium carbonation and a good mouthfeel — not thin at all. Amazingly, this is not even Verhaeghe’s best beer — Duchesse De Bourgogne is aged 18 months in oak casks before being mixed with eight-month-old beer. It’s darker and even more smooth than Vichtenaar, with more toffee-chocolate tones.

And one of a Brewery, Peak Organic Brewing Co.

Cadoux did not have to worry — the beer was good. His pale ale, the first release, is a solid American pale ale, very malty with a nice fruity taste.

Despite its bitterness, the nut brown ale was still a smooth beer to drink. After having a sample of the beer with Cadoux, I went out and picked up a six pack of my own, because it is one of the best nut browns I’ve ever had.

It’s not quite as good as an acutal study, but here’s anecdotal evidence that the mortality rate for released red drum is under 5%.

Berliner Kindl Weisse

The Berliner Kindl Weisse is a schizophrenic beer, offering two distinct experiences to those lucky enough to run across it. In its basic form, the Kindl Weisse is a tart, low-alcohol (2.5 abv) wheat beer, similar to a Cantillon, though not nearly as sharp or sour, a style known as a Berliner Weissbier.

Berliner Weisse is a top-fermented, bottle conditioned wheat beer made with both traditional warm-fermenting yeasts and lactobacillus culture. They have a rapidly vanishing head and a clear, pale golden straw-coloured appearance. The taste is refreshing, tart, sour and acidic, with a lemony-citric fruit sharpness and almost no hop bitterness.

In the form it is most oftern seen by tourists, it is tinged either red or green by a syrup added to it by the bartender, as the Reinheitsgebot laws prevent anything other than hops, barley and water from being used in the production of beer. The red syrup is raspberry, whereas the green is made from a herb known as Woodruff.

The homebrewer and I had two each of the Kindls tonight, the first unadulterated, and the second with the Woodruff syrup. The raspberry was available at Sams, but given a choice between known and unknown in beer, I’ll go for the unknown almost ever single time.

The first glass was as advertised, sour, refreshing, and with an end note vaguely reminiscent of the orange circus peanuts candy I devoured entirely too many of as a youth. The taste is quite at odds with the light, lager color–it would be an ideal beer to foist upon an unsuspecting friend, were it not a sin to waste good beer just to see a spit-take.

I had a momentary spot of trouble with the second brew, as the label writing on the woodruff syrup bottle was entirely in German, and I was at a bit of a loss as to exactly how much syrup to add to the glass in order to achieve the glowing green tinge you see above. Eventually I decided on two teaspoons worth, and while the end result was more like fungal pool water than radioactive martion pee, the addition of the syrup made from a much smoother brew. The first example we could drink a lot of. The second, a lot of, quickly. Note that this could be considered heresy.

Not that we’d have been that affected, given the low abv. Perhaps if we alternated with shots of the cask-strength MacAllen.