Huyghe: Paranoia Rouge (Belgium: Low alcohol: 0.3% ABV)
Visual: Dark black cherry red body with thin red white head.
Nose: Black cherry yogurt. Green grapes. Lemon sorbet.
Body: Black cherry. Sticky gummed brown envelopes. Lightly tart. Lightly chalky. Slight Madeira cake. Slight tart brown ale.
Finish: Green grapes. Elderberry. Slightly chalky. Malty biscuits. Slight mild vinegar.
Conclusion: Low abv bags have been a mixed bag over the years, and even the better ones we get these days often rely on high hopping, or a gimmick to get around the issues working with a low malt base.
So, with that in mind, I was expecting this to be fine, but basically fruit juice as the fruit side of this dominated, using that fruitiness as the gimmick to get around the low malt.
While this is led by the fruit, a super black cherry feeling style, it is delivered with a light tartness that makes it more appealing that it would have been with just that sweeter front. What surprised me though that there is, even at this low abv, a gentle but recognisable beer style behind it.
It has a lightly tart malt backbone, a kind of gummy brown envelope style I tend to associate with Flemish bruin beers which is a nice little break from the fruit, and makes this not just seem like fruit juice. It is a beer , if an unusual one for a low abv take.
It is well placed as a replacement for the higher alcohol version it is replacing. While it is on the sweeter end of the scale, it is still easygoing and with those tart hints and hints of the base beer quite sessionable despite the sweetness.
A nice enjoyable, easy drinking thing, with lots less alcohol that the usual Belgian rouge.
Background: Low alcohol time for a short while recently, which thankfully these days does not have to mean dull. Grabbed this from Independent Spirit – I had to be careful with listing the name for this as there is both an alcohol and alcohol free Paranoia, of which this is neither, this is Paranoia Rouge which is also alcohol free but a separate release from Paranoia alcohol free. They do not make this easy on me with the bottle labelling. Anyway, I ramble, went with Witchcraft: Witchcraft as backing music. It had been on a while back at The Sickle in Bath and the owner kindly let me know what was playing so I could grab it myself. In retrospect I should have gone with Garbage V2.0 for their banger of a song “I think I’m Paranoid”. Black Sabbath’s Paranoid would have been too obvious though.
