Some like it sour

A brewer never far from many beer geek's lips is mikkeller, that Danish crazy chap who likes to mash up beer styles for fun. A range I had been interested to try was his spontanale series, spontaneously fermented fruit beers, made authentically in Belgium. When they came into stock on the Brewdog online store I had to get some to try for myself.

The lineup.

 Starting off with the baby of the series at 5% and presumably the base beer, spontanale. It is a hazy blonde in colour with lactic acid and citrus on the nose with a hint of brettanomyces mustiness. Initially sweet the middle is long and sour with a brief flourish of bitterness from the hops in the long finish.

The kriek was sampled next. A gorgeous deep pink-red on colour with a candisugar nose with hints of cobwebs and cheerystones. Sourness muted by cheery flavours in this though it has a longer finish than the ale., perhaps due to the increased ABV (7.7%)

The highlight of the series for me was the framboos. Hazy mid-pink with rasberries prevalent throughout, the fruit balances the lactic sourness beautifully building to a lengthy sweet and sour finish.

The next beer, cassis, was unfortunately all flashy upfront but with little by way of fruit presence to back it up. Purple-red with a pink head and earthy brett nose. Fairly dull and muted sourness with a harsh finish.

The spontangrape was a similar colour to the base ale. Bretty nose with a hint of grape must, tasting like an oxidised wine or white wine winegar with a lactic finish. It was pretty refreshing and perhaps the most successful out of the non-traditional fruit usages.

Spontancranberry was red-amber and poured very lively with melon-rind, dry berries and least compost on the nose. Its sour, mouth-puckeringly sour especially in the finish; so decided to blend it with some homebrew woodforde's wherry which helped balance it out a bit.



An interesting range but probably the only one I'd drink again would be the spontanframboos and I'll sttick to the Belgian sours in the future. Has anyone else tried any of these beers?