Mini Review: Unibroue Quelque Chose
I split this 1pt 9.4fl.oz gem with my gaming buddy Eric last night. This is quite the brew. I knew we were in for something a little different when reading the bottle I came accross these instructions:
“In the summer enjoy Quelque Chose on the rocks as a cocktail or a refreshing aperitif, in the winter, savour it like a glass of hot wine or a supurb apres-ski warmer.”
What?!?!? Serve on ice or warmed? Two rules of beer drinking thrown right out the door right away. Eric and I opted for over ice since it’s Memorial Day weekend here in the states, the unofficial start of summer.
Quelque Chose (and thank goodness we are not doing this review on the podcast, I don’t want to even think about that pronunciation) claims to be an ale brewed with cherries. So I went in thinking it might be something like a Sam Adams Cherry Wheat. I could not have been more wrong.
This brew smells of cherries as soon as you pop the cork. It pours dark but not heavy with next to no head. The taste is complex and completely;y dominated by the cherries with a hint of spice. I was hard pressed to find any sort of ale flavor to it at all.
If you have ever had real pressed cherry juice, not some artificially flavored cherry drink, but something like a R.W. Knudson cherry juice, that is pretty much what you are getting here. There is a sweetness that dominated the Ale but right at the end there is a touch of sour that does a good job balancing out the flavors. There are also a touch of Vanilla, Cinnamon, Clove in the brew but you really have to look for them past the over powering flavor of fresh cherries.
Unibroue claims it’s an ale, but like I said I was really hard pressed to find any flavor or ale or beer in this, although Cindy (@trillian1117) also had a few sips and claims she could tatse the ale in it, so I had a hard time rating this as a beer.
I’d say this, as a berverage I likes it as much as any of the Iambics I have tried, in fact I liked it more so that the traditional favorite fromboise lambic which I find too sweet for most occasions. So I guess that would make it a 5/5 for me, but…. trying to compare this brew to any more traditional beers is near imposable, since this comes across, at least over ice, as some sort of fresh cherry spritzer.
I am curious to come back to this one in the fall or winter and try it warmed. Perhaps we get it on the show then and let Rob have a taste of it, since this is right up his sweet tooth. ;-)
