Holy Goat: Blood Eagle (Scotland: Fruit Flemish Red: 6.66% ABV)
Visual: Hazy cherry-aid red to black cherry center. Reddened off white medium sized head.
Nose: Cherry yogurt. Wheat flecks. Sour red wine. Black currant and crushed red grape skin. Thick. Strawberry. Brown bread.
Body: Tart. Sweet plum. Sweet red wine. Sour cherry fizzy sweets. Sticky gummed brown paper. Lightly fizzy. Fizzy lemon sherbet. Peppery bitterness. Rye crackers. Black cherry.
Finish: Sour cherry fizzy sweets. Sweet plums. Light tart raspberry. Gummy – Gelatine sweets in general. Brown bread. Bourbon air.
Conclusion: This is very rewarding, with thick gummy brown paper style take on the sticky, sour red Flemish ale at the base but has been filled in every inch with some twist and turn that makes it stand out.
The fruit is the most obvious twist, as you might expect, sweet plums are there, but the sour notes and tart fruit notes are more evident. There is a raspberry freshness and sour black cherry, often in a slightly artificial style that calls to the sour gelatine fizzy sweets that exists. It is gummy in its thickness and the flavours really vinous with lots of red wine and red grape notes hanging around even as the main fruitiness is waning.
Around that is a peppery, slightly bitter character into a brown bread grounding. Savoury in general, slightly spicy, and slightly spirity in a bourbon to rye style. It is a mix of lower grounding notes that bring you down from that tarter flavours, and tells of the alcohol still present there.
So much to examine as you can probably tell, and while the flavours are wide ranging they never clash. If I had to criticize it I would say that the gumminess builds up over time to become very sticky at the end, and a bit too present, but this only becomes an issue at the very end when the more savoury gumminess tends to dominate and the fruitiness lightens.
Overall a very impressive and fun to examine sour beer.
Background: Oh, Holy Goat, I have had a few of these before and have been blown away by them, so I really needed to pull my thumb out and actually do notes on one of them. This one is, ok deep breath, based on a Flanders Red and a British stock ale, fermented with wild yeast, blended with an amber sour that had been aged in rye whisky barrels, then added in blackcurrant and redcurrant that had been used in a prior Flanders red, then a mix of smoked and unsmoked plums – with the smoked plums done on red wine staves – were added in. Follow all that? Because I think I got lost somewhere. Anyway, grabbed from Independent Spirit, this was drunk while listening to Laura Jane Grace and The Devouring Mothers: Bought To Rot.
