Lost Palms are closing out the year with a couple of fruit sours.
They describe Laid Back Beat as tasting like watermelon Chupa Chups*, and I can’t beat this description. (Actually they also said "pineapple popsicles" but I’m mostly tasting the watermelon.) It has the clean flavour of watermelon Chupa Chup, but instead of the sugary sweetness there’s a straightforward sourness and a crisp and quick finish. I want to drink it in the pool.
Laid Back Beat pours a blush colour like a rosé, which is delightful… but LP went and made the gorgeously coloured Cardinal Lava to one-up themselves.
Or, to be more accurate, Lost Palms AND Seeker Brewing made the gorgeous colour, since this is a collab brew between the two breweries. Head brewer Mitch from Lost Palms chose to have cherries in the brew, Seeker head brewer Jeff chose pomegranates, and when they came together they got a beer that looks like cranberry pomegranate juice** - or as the official description says, "deep, vibrant pink with touches of Cardinal crimson".***
This sour isn’t actually all that smoothie-ish, so set your expectations accordingly. It’s clear, rather than having the cloudy opacity of most smoothie sours, and leaves no sludge at the bottom of your glass. And while it smells like fruited sugar – you know, the kind you may find on the rim of a colourful cocktail, or crystallised on candied berries – that sweetness is more of a balancing force than a dominant one when it comes to the taste. But as a sour-sweet, beautifully bright cherry pomegranate beer, Cardinal Lava does very well.
Mick Wüst
It has never occurred to me before that Chupa only has one "p" so surely shouldn’t be pronounced "chupper". Just did a little research and found it’s a Spanish brand, and is pronounced "chooper choop". Mind is blown.
Which may sound like an unnecessarily dumb description considering this beer contains cherries and pomegranate, but hey, I’ve never seen cherry pomegranate juice before. Leave me alone.
**I tried to look up the colour "cardinal crimson" but just got lots of pictures of some anime dragon robot. To be fair, though, the dragon robot is the colour of this beer.
Published December 16, 2022 2022-12-16 00:00:00
