Opposite Ends of the Fruit Spectrum

Ever seen that movie Monster Squad? About 20 or so years ago I remember watching this, but not too much else about it. Well my friend's sister just bought it today so that was cause for a minor celebration. My friend also had an Alpine Chez Monieux (pronounced Shame-On-You), a Kriek, sitting around at home and decided this would be a good time to try it out. This 750mL bottle runs about $28 at Alpine so we were hoping for the best. It didn't let us down either. The aroma has plenty of tartness, with a big sour cherry presence to go with it. There's also a lot of cherry sweetness coming through as well. The taste is similar. Moderately sour, cherries present all the time. We really liked this beer. It is overall somewhat straight forward with basically just the sour aspect plus cherry. Not too terribly complicated I guess you could say, but pretty tasty. 4.35/5

The beer I brought over I thought we be a great nightcap. This was a beer I've been wanting to try for a few years but only finally got around to trading for it recently. That beer is Kuhnhenn Raspberry Eisbock. Sad to say but this was the worst beer I've ever had and a total drain pour. Also sad that it wasn't infected or anything, the flavors were just really weird. Kuhnhenn describes it as a combination of chocolate, caramel and raspberry. I could maybe see this in the aroma. Although the raspberry isn't huge it's there- barely. There's also this dark caramel sorta thing going on as well but overall it makes the aroma really really weird. As for the taste, just horrible. I can't really even describe it but the raspberry component barely comes out like one would expect (I thought it would be showcasing the raspberry at least as much as New Glarus' Raspberry Tart). Anyway, after a handful of sips this thing made it's way down into the plumbing. Regardless of all the great reviews for this beer on BA- I would NOT recommend it and it's currently my lowest rated beer. 1.8/5

If you're wondering if our senses were a bit off here, be assured they were not. We gave the dog a sample of each. He would have lapped up the entire glass of Chez Monieux if he could have. On the other hand, he seemed more than annoyed when presented with a sample of the Raspberry Eisbock.