St. Louis Kriek Beer Review by Raisa Sanchez

In 1830, several immigrants from Germany and Bohemia found its way to St. Louis. The majority of them settled in Soulard, the oldest neighborhood of the city. Soulard happens to be home to a number of breweries for many years that it even became home to Anheuser-Busch, the world's largest brewer before. In addition to this, the immigrants also had building skills, that led them to put up a number of breweries. St Louis also had a lot of advantages because of its location and resources such as a numerous German population, plenty of water, rail connections, limestone caves and an entrepreneurial spirit which all paved way for successful beer industry in the city. Also, the caves in Benton Park neighborhood provided the perfect temperature for brewing and storing beer.

In fact, one of the group's favorite drink was the Belgian beverage, St. Louis Kriek Lambic. This beer is brewed by Van Honsebrouck company, which was started by Emiel and Louisa Van Honsebrouck way back in 1900. They purchased a small farm in Ingelmunster, a Belgium province of West Flanders where their brewery business first began. In 1953, they started specializing on high quality beers. Come 1986, the Van Honsebrouck family bought and restored a historic castle built by the Count of Flanders, Robrecht de Fries in 1705. This particular castle was constructed on top of the ruins of a convent that was first built by English monks back in 1640. When the family bought it, they made it open to the public and used the castle's cellars for maturing beers from the brewery. One of Van Honsebrouck's specializations is St. Louis' Fruit Lambic variants where in fruits are added after fermentation. Once fruits are mixed in, the beer undergoes further maturation before bottling. The fruit is generally dominant, making the alcohol content low.

Kriek meaning cherry uses fresh black cherry juice and natural sugar, which explains a lot of the beer's characteristics. Before tasting it, you can already smell the strong and sweet aroma of cherry, adding to that is its dark red beer color with a light shade of pink as its head. With only 3.2 percent of alcohol, one can distinguish right away its fruity characteristic. However, the flavor develops sourness but still stays predominantly sweet. Our group highly recommends this beer to teenagers, particularly to females, who are after for a good and delicious drink but does not want the lingering and strong taste of alcohol. This drink would also be suitable during light drinking parties.