Crumble In The Bronx – 4.8% ABV

Sour beers, you are probably thinking (Yuck), why the hell would you want to drink a beer that tastes sour. In general, if you went into a bar and purchased a pint of cask ale, then you started drinking it and it tasted sour, more than likely you’ll reappear back up to the bar and say ‘the beers off’.

The fact is, sour beers are never found in Cask Ales, but on the other hand, many craft beers are produced in a sour way, the next question you are probably wondering is why. Well, in the history section you will find out!

This is the second time I’ve actually tried a sour beer, the first time was not the best, the beer was called Salty Kiss and for some reason, my palate was just going against the flavour of the beer.

At this point, I was like, that’s it, I am never touching a sour beer ever again, but at the same time I was like why am I being defeated by this style of beer, so then after a couple of months I got in contact with one of my Instagram followers and he said to tackle this issue, you need to start off small and work your way up and that’s what I did.

This now smoothly brings me on to today’s post which is based on a sour beer called, Crumble In The Bronx (4.8% ABV)!

History

Crumble In The Bronx is a traditional sour beer that is proudly brewed by The Ridgeside Brewery! This is the second beer that I’ve sampled from the Leeds brewery. If you cast your mind back to January, I produced a review post on a beer called ‘Sparks Fly Up‘ which was a gorgeous sweet beer that did have such an outstanding hoppy character.

Anyway, back to the history of sour beers!

Why do we have sour beers? The answer is quite scientific, but I will try to answer it as best as I can. Basically, to make a beer sour, the main people at any brewery, so the brewers have to inoculate the beer, which means fermenting the beer by using one or a combination of fermenting agents: a genus of yeast called Brettanomyces, acid-producing bacteria and/or any type of conventional yeast and non-conventional yeast.

It all looks so complicated in my mind, haha!

An intriguing fact that has been established though is that beer drinkers tend to drink more sour beers than any other style of beer, this literally shocked me when I first found that out!

But when it comes to sour beers, there isn’t just one type of sour, there are many types, I’ll explain why. When I tried my first ever sour beer, Salty Kiss the first enjoyment I got from the can was the sensational fruity aromas, but when it came to the taste my mouth felt dry, I knew that this beer was heavily soured, but when I sampled crumble in the bronx it was a different story altogether, I preferred it, the finish was sweet and the beer wasn’t overly sour, the help from my Instagram follower to understand the knowledge of sour beers.

Currently, after only sampling a couple of sour beers, I will mention that this is a style of beer that is my least favourite, however, I am willing to learn this style of beer and you never know in the future this could be a beer that I could drink every week! We’ll see what happens!

Tasting Notes

Crumble In The Bronx is part of a dessert sour series produced by Ridgeside Brewery. This is a sour beer that’s not to be missed by its jammy texture. Raspberry, blackcurrant and apple that work together to make this beer jammy and tarty with vanilla notes and small hints of biscuit which appear through at the end of the taste. The aftertaste delivers a powerful and sensational sharp finish.

Review

So here we go my second sour beer, my heart was telling me everything will be okay, but my gut was yelling, why are you wanting to drink this!

In my mind, there is nothing wrong with trying something that you’ve tried once before and disliked, I mean if you keep on trying something before you know it you will fall in love with it. The important part of choosing a sour beer is doing your homework, the worst thing you can do is buy something and not read the tasting notes and you end up disliking the beer. So before you buy your selected sour beer, I would advise reading the can!

This is what I did when I picked up my can of sour beer from Brews Of The World, to be honest, it was a difficult decision, I picked out like five different cans and I couldn’t decide which one to go for, in the end, I selected Crumble In The Bronx, I just found the name really classy, the beer was retailed at £5.75. This is pretty much standard value for your craft beers, so I went for it and bought it.

The first feature I am going to point out about this sour beer is the colour, before I even cracked the can, I was starting to have instincts about the colour, aroma and flavour of the beer! I was still dwelling if I was going to enjoy this sour beer or not.

Okay, pouring time, well I couldn’t believe my eyes, the beer was red, almost identical to the colour of raspberries, I’ve never sampled a red beer before! If you view my feature picture at the top of the post you will see the colour of the beer for yourself.

So yes I was shocked by the appearance, but the aromas were perfect and welcoming, I could smell the raspberry, it was delicious, now I was understanding why this beer was called crumble in the Bronx. The taste was amazing, there was a custard feel at the back of my palate which was very enjoyable. The overall sourness was just right, it wasn’t so powerful, it was much better than the Salty Kiss beer that I sampled last year. I finished my beer thinking, well sour beers are not so bad after all!

Well, that was a remarkable beer, I am totally surprised that I really enjoyed it and it’s certainly a beer that I am recommending to you all! If it wasn’t for my Instagram follower who told me to start off small then I probably wouldn’t have bothered sampling any sour beers, but thanks to him I thoroughly enjoyed finding this beer and giving it a try as well.

Cheers

The Cask Connoisseur

This is a collaborative post with Brews Of The World, all beer review posts are subject to my own honest opinion.