When I first started drinking sours, I would go fuck around and try those $20 normal Cascade sours, and they would beat my ass mercilessly. I landed this beer to show it I’m not afraid of it. It’s like Pennywise the Clown, except I’m getting drunk in California instead of Maine. Holy mixed metaphors.
Another gem from Oregon's artisan beer scene. WHERE THEY BE GETTING ALL THE CHERRIES FROM THO.
Cascade Sang Royal, 9.35% abv, Wild Ale
I can’t hype this beer anymore than saying it is a pretty rare sour and here’s what the bottle has to say about itself, unabashedly: “Sang Royal is a big NW Style Sour Red Ale that spends over six months of lactic fermentation and aging in oak wine barrels. Sang Royal is from select stock that is matured an additional six months in Port barrels and refermented on Bing Cherries.” Alright, let’s do this shit.
A: The appearance is a deep murky ruby that looks like a burnt brick color that barely gives up the ruby when you put some light on it. Give a guy some ruby, ya know? It’s got an eggwhite frothy head with microbubbles that dont go anywhere, they just post up in the chill zone and look all light maroon.
When I knew that there was a box with 4 of these gems coming to my house, I looked like this all week, watching for the Fedex man.
S: You get a sour fuji apple smell, tart candy, sour ropes, maraschino cherry, and sour warhead smells. This has a great smell to it and doesn’t introduce a wide bevy of funk to the olfactory aspects. The OLFACTORY IS OPEN FOR BUSINESS. If you agitate it, much like a Django Reinhardt concert, things get mildly funky.
T: This has a huge tart bite at the outset that reminds me of those skittles that used to be covered in sugar and road salt. It pans away to a wide shot of two cherries, both tart to the core acrimoniously discussing the ongoings of the plum factory. Starwipe to the headmaster grape who oversees the entire operation and roll the credits. This isn’t as sour as the lambic and crazy geuze painstrippers overseas but it is a great sour with tons of stone fruit and juiciness to it to compliment the initial sour shock that it presents. It’s like that movie KIDS, where you think it’s just gonna be overwhelming and shock footage but then they reel you in, except this beer doesn’t rape a teenage girl at the end. Oh, spoiler alert.
This beer is a hybrid of something badass and something dirty, but the result is a sick cherry massacre.
M: The mouthfeel is dry, as you can expect from something this juicy and tart, the old gumline deconstruction sets to work hard with those juicy juice notes drilling your soft enamel like pilsbury crescent rolls. AND YOU NEVER GET ENAMEL BACK.
D: This beer becomes more drinkable as it warms because the cherries finally get their shit together and stop letting sour just hit on their chicks and they mobilize an offensive. I could put away a bottle of this, but then the pesky lambic tum tum sets in and you get the bubbleguts due to the crazy acidity so I GUESS you should share this one. For the haters.
A couple bottles of this and I'd be communicating with a bell asking for more sour cherry potations.
Narrative: The broken Stairclimber took on a life of its own at this Winnipeg gym. Carl Delgado sat 10 meters away and just enjoyed the scene, shrewdly sipping his cherry smoothie, enjoying the deeply puckering acidity boosts that he added to it. “So obviously Kaitlyne is THREATENED BY ME-” a frail minx of 19 years prattled on into her iPhone while blindly ascending onto the 5 foot high platform. She was promptly served a platter of shit and swiftly caressed the sweet embrace of the collapsed stairs and recounted the potential for legal action to her equally vapid phone counterpart. Carl nodded and smiled, this was better than the entire CBS lineup. With this endless spring of dark, sour levity, how would he move on to other pursuits? He could watch college undergrads simply fall down all day long. A sip of sour cherry smoothie was all he needed to garner contentment in his soul.
dontdrinkbeer 