Blending my first Kriek

The last of the blended sample

Last Summer I got started on my first Kriek by blending a sour blond ale with cherries. On it's own the sour blonde was dynamite. So mixed with 10 pounds of sour cherries I was expecting unicorns and rainbows. When I sampled it the first time I was floored...by how bad it was: 

Sanctification on tart cherries:

Aroma: Cherries, Medicinal, Band-aid

Flavor: Cherries, Cough Syrup

It was the gut kick that started my spiral towards questioning the whole fruited sours project. I was in a bad place after that tasting. Who wants to go on when all your results are bad? Where do you go from rock bottom? Just when I had abandoned all hope something magical happened: the beer turned.

What do I mean "turned"? It morphed from something terrible to something better than that. Gone was the medicinal aroma which lead to the strong flavor of cough syrup. Gone too were the phenols which made my beer smell like a band aid. What was left was a beer with a modest amount of funk, some sourness, and a cherry bliss. My only rational was that something needed a little O2 to begin it's fermentation and time to do so.

(Read more about my blending session after the break.)