3f Schaerbeeske Kriek, lambic, fruit, 6% abv
Appearance: This beer looks like grenadine on steroids. It projects this vibrant red and foamy pink pallor that is both inviting and a sign of toxins, acquired from the wild. The lacing is pink and sticky with incredibly tiny bubbles. It’s like Rose` for hard drug users.
Smell: There is a musky mossy cardboard finish to the nose of this beer. The cherry and strawberry notes are present and smell delicious and almost too archetypical to be real, like this is a type of lambic bubble bath. The smell makes me think that this will melt my face like Christopher Lloyd in who Framed Roger Rabbit. Toontown up in this bitch.
Taste: There is an super drying tart cherry taste to it that just tears the enamel off of your teeth. Your taste buds run for cover, but there will be no shelter provided under this oppressive regime. The drying nature combined with the cherry skins just wipes out the inside top layer of skin in your mouth. If cherries had a chemical warfare program, this would be their dirty bomb. It is delicious and caustic at the same time, like a well balanced Taylor Swift album. AND JUST AS BITTERING.
Mouthfeel: Well, the mouthfeel is, thin, sharp, and painful. I have no other way to describe it. Perhaps if this had a couple years to think about its past transgressions, it might be nicer outside the bottle but it is a rampaging asshole through and though. You just get this sweet tart needling like brambles rolling over your tongue. Somehow, it is all worth it, I cannot explain how or why. It is similar to eating an Atomic Warhead when you were a little kid, the sweet part makes the tortuous coating worthwhile. You wake up with cankersores and check webMD to realize that herpes are the OUTSIDE mouth kinds of sores and breathe a sigh of relief.
Drinkability: The huge price tag, violent mouthfeel, and incredible tartness make it tough to justify this asshole. I feel like a battered wife sticking up for it, but I suppose that it does have some redeeming factors. It is incredibly delicious and I am sure a vintage of this would be amazing. I just don’t know any average person that you could pop this open with at a ski lodge or, on a Grayhound bus to meet your baby’s momma. No pedestrian endeavors here, just cherry violence and infidelity.
Narrative: It took years of failed testing, losses, and emotional turmoil but Xenidyne Tech had finally completed its magnum opus, Grenidation Chericite, the most powerful cherry substance known to man. It was the cherry equivalent of a neutron star with billions of orchards compacted into its tiny buzzing core. The bright red orb rotated at whizzing speeds within the class translucent containment unit emitting red bolts of power with enough cherry to kill a man. “If we could only, remove the pits, we could harness even more cherry power into its core!” Professor Bergstrom ruminated, while drawing hackneyed scientific symbols on a white board. “BUT SIR! That’s too much cherry for one…FOR ANYONE!” Professor Bergstom turned quickly and gripped his notepad, “YOU TELL THAT TO MY DAUGHTER, the one who died because her Shirley Temple didn’t have enough cherry in it, the one who cried and ran out of that Red Robin and was hit by a car, YOU TELL HER THAT SHE DOESN’T DESERVE ANY MORE CHERRY!” The assistant lowered his head solemnly “I’m sorry, I had no idea.” “If I can’t bring her back, then I can allow her legacy to live on, IN TARTNESS!” he turned a large hackneyed dial that amped up the chericites, a unit of measure used to the intensity of cherriness in any given substance. “THE CHERRICITE CORE IS GOING TO BLO-” The fuschia mushroom cloud sent a massive turbid layer of fandango into the valley. The papers would unabashedly utilize the phrase “Cherry Bomb” in a tasteless fashion.