Rare beers and special beers and one-off beers are always fun to find. My wife and I found many while on our trip to Belgium.
Most brewers have a cadre of suds they produce on the regular. Building a business is hard without producing a few favorites. But most brewers will also experiment, mixing and matching ingredients, barrel aging brews, or spiking the batch with a particular flavor.
One ingredient the Belgians excel with is the cherry. Tart krieks (sour cherry lambic beers) have long been a Belgian favorite. But sour is not the only route one can go.
Brewery Achouffe, in Achouffe, Belgium, brewed a special Cherry Chouffe this year, which is their McChouffe Scotch ale brewed with cherries. The wife and I were able to sample it on tap at ‘t Poatersgat Cafe (The Monk’s Hole) in Bruges.
Smell: You are hit with a wonderful cherry vanilla smell.
Sight: A deep purple color to the beer with a raspberry beret of a head.
Taste: Sweet cherries, obviously. Bright, lively, lovely. The beer is like biting into a fresh cherry. Drinking the beer is like drinking sparkling cherry juice.
Alcohol: Cherry Chouffe is deceptively light. Those mischievous gnomes have spiked this beer with more than cherries as it clocks in at 8 percent. Watch out!
Overall: We thought it was amazing beer. We both remember it quite fondly. However, I will say, I already know it will not be for everyone. It is a sweet beer. Some might say it is far too sweet to enjoy, perhaps verging into the artificial, cloying, candy range. But we really enjoyed it. Each to their own. But this is NOT a kriek, not a sour lambic. It is a rouge (red) fruit beer. So keep that in mind. Also, we sampled it on tap. The flavors may be different in the bottle.
Bottom line: The beer was only a few euros. Well worth it in our minds.