Heritage Solstice Series Beers

[pootz]

Tried one of Heritage's "Solstice Series" beers last night. It was the Blackcurrant Rye Beer....I found it to be clean, fruity and spicey with decent hop bittering but still a tad unbalanced towards sweetness....but that isn't always a bad thing in a fruit beer.

I was struck by the poor reviews this beer had gained over the last few years because what I was drinking seemed rather decent..... if there was a fault it's that it was biased to the sweet side by the real fruit concentrate but there was a nice spiciness to it from the flaked rye and choice of hops.

I thought I'd come here and ask Perry if he had anything to do with tweeking this beer from it's former recipe?

It says this is a 5.5% beer and the former offerings were 4.5% but I wonder if that's all that has changed??

Perry?

[GregClow]

According to some inside info I got the other night, this year's version of the Blackcurrant Rye was brewed using an ale base, while last year's was brewed using a lager.

Considering that Heritage didn't make ales until the Scotch-Irish deal, I would strongly suspect that one of the S-I brands (most likely Sarge?) is now being used as the base beer.

[Stomp Brockmore]

I poured my glass of Heritage Blackcurrant Rye down the drain. I couldn't stomach it.

As I mentioned in another post though, I did notice a similar base character between these beers, especially in the aroma but also in the taste. Actually it's common between all of Heritage's products, and I noticed it again last night in the Church-Key West Coast IPA (yuck).

As much as I love the Sarge, I find this "whatever-it-is" aroma and flavour quite funky and unpleasant.