[erockrph]

I've been a little disappointed by some of Mikkeller's sours in the past (they weren't sour enough for me), but when I saw their line of fruit lambics in the New Arrivals section at the liquor store I had to stock up. I'm cracking into the gooseberry one first, since I have a few gooseberry bushes and I've never seen it used in beer before. They definitely seem like they'd be a good fit in a lambic.

The beer pours up a real hazy gold with a tint of green. I could easily mistake it's appearance for a heavily dry-hopped IPA. The nose is lactic with lambicus funk. There is a hint of berry in the nose, but none of the muskiness I get off of my gooseberries.

The flavor is very lactic-forward. I took a small sip at first, but I took a full sip the second time and got a full-on pucker. I also get some tart green gooseberry flavor. Again, it's not as musky as the gooseberries I've tried, but the only bush I got a sizeable harvest from this year was a red gooseberry. And I let them get super ripe before I picked them. Green gooseberries are mainly just a blast of tartness, and that fits this beer well. The berries also leave an impression of sweet flavor, even though the beer itself is actually bone dry.

The Brett is barely there on the palate, but it's pretty prevalent on the nose. This leads to an aroma of lambic funk as you take a sip, but then a fairly clean sour as it finishes. It works really well in this beer. There is a faint lambic funk on the finish, and it pairs really well with the faint gooseberry muskiness that lingers through the finish.

All-in-all, this is a damn good fruit lambic. I could drink a lot of this. Now I'm really looking forward to the other Mikkeller sours I bought. I'm also really looking forward to brewing with some gooseberries next year...