Jason Moore
Scarenbecca Kriek is a beer produced by Hanssens Artisanaal, who happens to be the oldest independent gueuze blender in the world. They blend 100 percent of the beers it produces, which means Hanssens doesn’t brew any of its own beer.
Rather, it receives previously brewed beer, or wort, from other breweries and all of the beer they use is fermented in the traditional lambic style where no yeast is added, but warm wort is left overnight in order to have wild yeast strains take over the beer and cause spontaneous fermentation. Hanssens uses multiple blends beers from different breweries of different ages and then ages them in barrels and often adds fruit to further the depth of the beer.
Scarenbecca Kriek is blended with 100 percent young lambic beer and 100 percent Schaarbeekse cherries. These cherries are a rare morello variety from Belgium and are naturally sour to the taste.
It pours an intensely deep red with basically zero carbonation. The red is incredibly rich and it looks very much like juice or even blood it is such an intense hue of red. The smell is really incredible and there is truly a bouquet of aromas happening; I am smelling a lot of funk and vinegar, musty oak and a huge amount of cherry. There are some hints of leather, lemon peel, sweet berry and acidity, also some yeast and sweetness on the back end.
The taste is a huge sour cherry juice up front, it’s followed by red wine vinegar, oak and very tart citrus. Some other flavors are are undertones of funk, earthiness and sweet malt. There is a whole lot of acidity in this one was well, I think due to the lack of carbonation there is nothing to cut the sourness. The beer is very thick on the tongue and almost drinks like a wine since the carbonation isn’t there.
Note: After reading about the beer the, lack of carbonation is a very common issue it seems.
