Well this might be interesting …

33cl bottle. Pour gives a cherry-red, brownish body with a pink tinge to the effervescent head. Bubbles fade fairly fast to yield some lace and thin film on the surface of the beer.

Nose has mainly an artificial cherry smell that obviously opens up and grows on warming.

Tastes are a chocolate covered cherry note with dashes of cough syrup in the there too. I mean there’s just no getting away from that. The initial shocking sweetness actually goes away somewhat as the beer is consumed, and is replaced by a more tangy, cherry based bitterness. The bitterness builds over the course of the bottle, and the sweetness continues to take a seat further back. It could be that the palate simply adjusts, or maybe that the woody cherry is cumulative.

Alcohol is nowhere to be seen, and this maybe just the excessive cherry elements drowning it out. Mouthfeel is soft, with some gentle carbonation that makes the beer a little more drinkable than a still, syrupy body would do. Redeems it a bit.

I mean it’s very cherry forward as one would expect, and with no tartness to speak of this is pretty hard going for more than the 330 mL. Hard to imagine me going back to this, but glad to have had it once.