Prairie Artisan Ales - "Cleveland Cowboy"
Reviewed on Episode 259
Listen Here
Brewery: Prairie Artisan Ales
Location: Oklahoma City, OK
Style: Imperial Pastry Sour
ABV: 7.9%
“Imperial Pastry Sour with tart cherries, sweet cherries, vanilla, cinnamon, and pecans.”
Jonny: 1.3/10
This is not nearly as sweet nor as sour as I was expecting. The vanilla is on the nose only. This almost smells like “Prairie Bomb!” if it went sour. I'm not really getting any cinnamon. I'm getting almost a meat quality that I can only attribute maybe to the pecans, which as everyone knows, is a dense meaty nut. It’s not great. It’s not horrible. I am completely “whelmed.” I wish it had more defining character traits. I’m not getting “pastry” qualities. At best, this is semi-sweet. I feel like this is a case of poor advertising for sure.
Max: 5/10
This is neither amazing nor disgusting for me. It's plenty sweet. There's some tartness mostly on the back burner in a very acidic, burning the back of the throat kind of way which I attribute partially to the high ABV but also from those tart cherries. The vanilla balances some of that out with the cinnamon adding a complex layer of spice. This is, by all measurements of flavor, a Christmas time beer. From a marketing perspective, reframing this as a holiday beer is the move because I do like what I'm drinking.