CHERRIES JUBILEE: NEW GLARUS’ “WISCONSIN BELGIAN RED”

NEW GLARUS BREWING from New Glarus, WI have made their reputation both in and outside of their home state with these fruit-infused, Belgian-style ales that I’d been dying to try. I’ve been to 41 of the 50 states in the Union in my lifetime, but Wisconsin isn’t one of them, and it’s the only one in which you can buy New Glarus beer. Unless, of course, you know good people who are willing to ship you some, as I now do. WISCONSIN BELGIAN RED is an odd but pleasurable one. Seriously, if you presented this to me as “cherry soda”, I would have believed you, and probably told you “it tastes a little like beer, though”. Because it has instead been presented to me as a cherry-infused beer, I’m comfortable pronouncing it as more than a little reminiscent of cherry soda.

NEW GLARUS WISCONSIN BELGIAN RED is highly, highly carbonated, and quite sweet to boot. The “Belgian” in the name led me to believe that this might have an acidic or sour taste to it, but I reckon they’ve saved that flavor profile for their RASPBERRY TART ale, a bottle of which I also have at home for TBD consumption. I’m detecting a little bit of hops in this beer, and a faint hint of woodiness that slightly takes the sweetness down a notch – which is good. Another great thing about this one is that you just know you’re drinking real cherries, not the crap that would come in a cherry soda. And yet I’m not sure I dig it as much as others do – nor even quite as much as I did the NEW GLARUS CHERRY STOUT I reviewed a couple of weeks ago. I’m the guy who’s usually defending fruit beers from the skeptical hoards, and this is supposed to be one of the great ones, but the best I can muster up for it is a 6.5/10.