Les Trois Mousquetaires Aramis Red Lager

By John & Dad on July 1, 2008 @ 8 PM (No Comments)

In the ongoing father and son Thursday night beer review saga, we test drove the Aramis Red Lager from Les Trois Mousquetaires up in Quebec. It must be tough being a brewery in Quebec knowing that you’re going to always be compared to the gold standard for not only Quebec but for all of Canada – Unibroue. Our initial experience with Les Trois Mousquetaires was the Imperial Weizen that we enjoyed thoroughly, so we were anxious to see what else they had in store.

We used an American pint glass and got an initial temperature of 52.5 F. The pour yielded an average 1 inch fizzy off-white head that dissipated quickly and left a fair amount of head lacing in the process. It had about a medium carbonation and was a hazy orange/red in appearance.

The aromas were all over the place with this one – caramel, some toasted malts, citrus, broth and vegetables. A bit V-8 like and also a bit beef stewish. More specifically on the citrus we pulled mandarin orange and on the vegetables we pulled tomatoes. We also got an overall slightly metallic smell that wasn’t great.

There wound up being a lot fewer flavors than aromas – mostly the caramel and toasted malts. It actually had a pretty good balance – it leans a bit malty initially and then the finish gets a little hoppy. There is no body lacing to speak of and the mouthfeel is somewhat oily. The initial flavor notes are a light sweet, light acidic and light bitter. In the short finish everything dissolves but the bitter, which stays light. On our patent pending malt to hop scale it’s about a 4 – one click on the malty side of balanced.

Though it is drinkable we wouldn’t call this repeatable. It also wasn’t particularly memorable and we probably wouldn’t buy it again. If we were in a bar and had ordered this we’d finish it and then switch off to another beer.

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