Good morning!
A couple of days ago I was lucky enough to find what I consider a gem in one of the local supermarkets.
Last evening I opened the first beer from the pack. It is the Petrus Aged Red ale that I went for, I wanted something fruity after dinner.
The Aged Red is a blend of 15% Petrus Aged Pale, which is Petrus' 'mother beer' - a sour beer aged for 2 years in massive oak barrels traditionally called foeders and 85% of their double brown ale with some sour cherries added for good measure.
I poured it into a tulip glass. The colour is a dark rubby red to almost brown; it formed a finger thick head of red-tainted white foam that quickly dissipated. It did keep a thin film like layer of foam until the end. Nice lacing on the glass similar to a wine's legs but not quite as pronounced.
The aroma made me think of cherries immediately and of rich malt. Couldn't smell any sourness.
Tasting it, the beer feels a bit too sweet initially but the taste quickly develops. It starts with sweet and tart cherries making me think of my grandmas open fire cooked dark cherry marmalade heh. The malts quickly start shining through, sweet and mildly sour; a nice woody taste develops in the background (I call it woody but I'm sure it's the oak, I'm just not good enough to differentiate).
It has a medium body with a relatively low carbonation; the carbonation stayed the same from start to finish and it kept bubbling slowly until the last sip.
Over all it feels like a full fruit beer but with so many interesting mature flavours shining through. It is a very smooth drink and I was surprised at how little I can taste the alcohol strength of this beer. At 8.5% it's not a session beer in any way but if I wouldn't know the strength before hand I would probably treat it like one. The single 330ml bottle I had made me feel like I had a couple of my regular medium alcohol IPAs.
As a conclusion I think it's a great beer, I would have preferred a lot more sourness though - although it is marketed as a sour beer, in a blind tasting I would have classed it as a fruit beer, a nice one at that but I would have attributed the tartness it has to the cherries. So even though it's not what I expected, I am very happy with it and can't wait to try the others.
Cheers guys!