Taken as red

Is it just me or are there a lot more colourful fruit beers around this season? We had one on Wednesday and today I have two more. This time the theme is red.

Initially, I had no idea what "Globe Salute" meant or why Rye River decided to call their cherry-flavoured sour beer that. I thought maybe it was a variety of cherry, but it turns out it's a firework, the one also known as a cherry bomb -- one of those occasional Americanisms for which we must forgive this brewery. The beer is 4.5% ABV and a bright pink colour. That makes it look like a simplistic novelty job, but looks can be deceptive: manys a well-made and deeply complex wild beer is luminous pink. This isn't one of those. Basic is the game here: syrupy fake-fruit flavour and a tang which definitely isn't properly sour. It's unimpressive, and for over a fiver a can in off licences, offers poor value for money. I try not to be a snob about such things, and I am aware that not everything like this has to be Brett-laced and oak-aged, but this manages to be overly sweet and rather boring. No salute from me, I'm afraid. Drop and give me twenty.

At around the same time, Hope had similar ideas and released one called Limited Edition 36: Raspberry and Lime Sour, which is rather less intriguing. This one is 4.8% ABV and, although the can claims it's red, it's more the orange pink shade of highly polished copper. It is almost unheard of for something like this to put the sourness ahead of the fruit purée, but here we are. The first sip is a puckering, mouthwatering jolt of candyshop sourness, all sherbet, sour jellies and red liquorice. Engaging my grown-up palate for a moment, I found the lime's bite to be central to proceedings, accompanied by several other sorts of sharpness, including green apple skin and a dry cereal twang. This is a very rare example of raspberry in a beer being subtle and providing background harmonies rather than the loudest vocal track. I approve. Its main contribution is a pink sugary smack on the finish. Cheeky! All told, it's a well-put-together beer, and delivers proper sour complexity where the norm (see above) is to simply pile in the syrup. And if you're not into picking the profile apart forensically, I can also tell you it's a beaut as a post-chore refresher on a sunny patio.

I doubt our nation's brewers are done feeding us fruit beers for the year yet. At least it's not endless samey takes on hazy IPA.