When the sour moment first hit me I was a young boy, trying a lolly which had the ominous name of which it would devastate my young little tastebuds into an experience I had never had before… and it left me a little bit scared, and a little bit surprised that a sweet, sweet lolly could have (of all things) been so so sour?! ‘How could this be?’ I wondered to myself… Up until this point each and every lolly consumed was sweet, sweet candy… sweet, sweet sugary goodness (and I didn’t forget to brush my teeth!)

But as I continued to savour this life changing lolly in my mouth until I could no longer take it no more, I literally had to take it out of my mouth, and put it back into its wrapper – I was not done with this lolly yet, and still believed that I could give it another go when I finally puckered up the courage, and the self belief that I could do it… And so my first experience with a sour lolly had left a bitter, and sour aftertaste in my mouth, and this ‘little lolly sour experience’ has been scarred into my memory ever since.

But ‘what on earth was this little lolly that packed a serious sour explosion called?’ I hear you ask? WARHEADS – was the name, and it would fairly describe how it left my tastebuds in total and utter devastation upon dispatch into my young little mouth, onto my tongue, and impacting my tastebuds to such a degree that it left a virtual scar in my memory. The flavour? Lemon, which seemed to suggest a more acute WARHEAD than say any other flavour – the beer sour meter had been turned right up to full ball, and I had been left with what the logo of these things had suggested – a thermonuclear-like flavour explosion in my mouth. 

Fast forward on your VCR to 2020 and I’m sitting in a bar about to drink a beer that’s titled ‘Imperial Raspberry Sour’ and it gets me to a point where I’m (again) questioning at what point does a beer cease being a beer? But that’s a question for another day, and another post, and my focus right now is on this soury brew that has me and my tastebuds well and truly captive.

There is nothing more unique to this beer. It’s sour, and it’s citrusy, and it has lighter bubbles, which is probably a good thing given its intensity on the palette. It’s truly bold, and yes, it tastes very much like a warhead lolly, except it’s not lemon flavour this time, rather it’s raspberry flavour, and I can taste the absolute bitterness and tartness of the berries. Is it any different to say a lemon flavoured WARHEAD? Yes, and it’s probably not as sour (in a citrus sense), so the mark on the sour scale is probably a little lower, and you don’t have that slight tastebud tingliness that you get from a lemon flavoured sour. But, the sour is there, and it’s long lasting (after consumption), so it lasts… and lasts… which is an interesting observation, as I don’t normally get flavour lasting on the pallet for too long, but in this case its lasted for well over an hour, and this is why I titled this article ‘The Hour of Sour’.