Just a bit of fun

Today's beers have very little in common with each other, other than they're in broadly wild-fermented styles and have fruit added. Both intrigued me enough to buy one each and drink back to back.

The first is from Funky Fluid, a Polish brewer I last encountered at the Wrocław festival in 2019. It's called Sangria Sour, being a sour beer brewed with pomegranate, orange and red grape: not a mix I'd seen before. It's hazy ochre in the glass and what little head formed didn't last long. The aroma is zingy, with the zesty orange and rich grape doing a good job of suggesting sangria. It's only 3.5% ABV and that makes it quite thin. You wouldn't want a heavy texture on something like this but I still think more body would improve it. A regular complaint of mine about fruited sour beer is that they're not sour enough. This one is, however, with a sharp and stimulating tartness. The downside is that the fruit itself doesn't really come through, and again I'm blaming the low gravity for that. There's a vague orangeyness but none of the rest that's promised. It's a failure as a sangria simulacrum but is nicely refreshing, which I guess is its principal task. While it's fine and quite enjoyable, it didn't live up to everything promised on the can.

Full Circle is a completely new brewery to me and the beer that caught my eye from their range was Asleep in the Orchard, a cherry saison. It's a delightful scarlet colour, topped with a thick layer of pink-tinted froth. The aroma is sweet but it doesn't smell like cherry, rather lemonade or sherbet. It tastes much more saison-like, a mix of dry farmyard earthiness with pear and lychee esters. So this is no silly novelty, but I think the cherry has got lost, other than in the appearance. At 6.5% ABV it's quite thick and there's a syrupy feel that may have something to do with the added fruit. It's hard to be too cross with it as it's a rock solid saison, but as above, I was hoping for something a bit daft and didn't get it.

So there you have it. Two breweries making decent beer, though claiming they're being more -- for want of a better word -- creative than it turns out they are.