Reviewed: Victory Sour Monkey
Product description: Sour Monkey puts a tastefully tart twist on our Golden Monkey’s sweet, fruity essence. A sharp, citrus-laden tang makes this brew a Monkey all its own!
Victory Brewing – Victory Sour Monkey – 12 oz. bottle poured into a chalice – 9.5% abv.
Sour beer is not the first thing to comes to mind when I hear Victory Brewing. I’m a big fan of their pilsners, and I’m also a die-hard Storm King fan. But Victory does the typical American brewpub thing and takes a stab at just about every beer style in existence from Irish dry stout to cherry gose. And to be fair, that Kirsch Gose is really well done.
I was curious about this beer since the Sour Monkey label says it is an Abbey Tripel with Brettanomyces. Brett addition almost never means the beer is actually sour in flavor. There usually needs to be some sort of lacto/pedio bacterial component to do that job. Thankfully, Victory has a video on how this beer is made:
Now that we know all about the beer, let’s dig in. I sampled this from a 12 oz bottle packaged on 6/9/2017. That makes it over 6 months old, but an abbey tripel, especially a soured one, should hold up for several years in the bottle. Into the glass, Sour Monkey is crystal clear golden in color with medium white foam that settles down quickly but still leaves a sizeable layer of foam. The aroma is similar to a Berliner Weisse in style with cream of wheat and corny grain from the pilsner malt and heavy lemon juice. The flavor begins with a butyric acid-like harsh bite that moves to a softer, pilsner-grain focused body in the mid-palate. There’s a lot of grain presence here for a sour blonde with the pilsner malt too prominent and poorly integrated. Heavy lemon and lime juice couple with a touch of saltiness to give the beer a margarita flavor, but the balance just isn’t there with apparent acidity at a 9 out of 10. In the finish, you get white grape juice and touches of butteriness perhaps from the lacto. My first impression is that it tastes like an over-the-top, high-acid Berliner Weisse.
Then comes that massive 9.5% ABV that is carried over from the base recipe for Golden Monkey. Since the beer is so acidic like margarita mix, that alcohol content is scarily hidden. Here you are drinking away like this was a refreshing Berliner, and about half-way through the 12 oz pour that ABV creeps up and it’s lights out if you’re not careful.
Overall, I think this beer needs some fine-tuning. There are harsher acids damaging the mouthfeel that shouldn’t be there, and the overall acidity is off the charts. There are refreshing moments and then there are abrasive moments. Given the high ABV and high acidity, this isn’t a beer you can sit down and relax with. You need to share it. And even then, someone is going to ask why you served them a glass of lemon juice.
October 20, 2020 @ 2:21 pm
I absolutely love this beer. Sour’s are my favorite and they did such a wonderful job. It has such great lemon citrus zest that puckers your taste buds so tantalizingly. It’s so refreshing that you want to just drink em down on a hot summer day. Than. …. four in. Your drunk. Perfectly delicious.
September 8, 2020 @ 6:34 pm
Fucking banging don’t listen to these old ass mother fuckers shits great
May 31, 2020 @ 8:32 pm
This is with out a doubt the worst beer I have ever tasted in my entire life and im old af. this is fucking horrible im wasted right now and I still cant drink this shit. I’m going to end up giving it to the pigs but I have my doubt they will eat it in the slop. this is so bad it could ruin pig slop. if you see this do not…. do not but this beer buy absolutely anything other than this. literally anything undrinkable.
March 9, 2020 @ 10:28 pm
I have never tasted anything as bad as this in my life
May 31, 2020 @ 8:34 pm
This is so bad it made me get online in the middle of the night and make a post to some random website while im drunk that is how bad this beer is.
June 29, 2019 @ 2:50 pm
I love it. So does my wife. I love the sour taste that makes me cringe at first sip. Then the ABV just knocks me on my butt after one 12 oz. so the question is. Why do we get sooo tips after one beer. Awesome.
May 31, 2020 @ 8:44 pm
How do I downvote this? Its like drinking stale beer that has been mixed 60/40 with lemon juice. The 60 is the lemon. this is without a doubt the worst beer I have ever had in my entire life and im not young. If its not to late do not buy this… buy literally anything other than this ANYTHING! rubbing alcohol would be better.
March 23, 2019 @ 7:42 pm
I sent this to the manufacturer:
I would like to express my admiration for your Golden Monkey Belgian style tripel with added spice. The beer goes down very smooth with a 9.5% kick you in the butt alcohol content. I enjoyed it so much that I even tried the Sour Monkey… Now I have tried a lot of beers in my day from porters, IPA’s, ales, specialty beers, you name it, and I have found redeeming qualities in them all. However, after drinking only a few sips of the Sour Monkey I had an epiphany! I thought maybe you all were going for a bitter/sour in league with an IPA but in reality, you were going for a sour citrus. But as it turns out, it was more like a shitrus… This is the first time in my life I have been unable to finish a beer, going so far as throwing away the remainder of a six pack because it was so foul! Once upon a time I got drunk on Gold Schlager and I was unable to eat anything with cinnamon for over a decade. Now I have been totally turned off from citrus drinks because each time I taste citrus now it reminds me of the disgusting Shitrus flavor of Sour Monkey! Please do not inflict this beer any longer on an unsuspecting public. Again, I would like to state my love for Golden Monkey and I hope for a better sequel in the future. Thank you for your time.
March 14, 2019 @ 9:04 pm
Well…. Sour Monkey is sour. So Sour in fact that the tartness of the beer totally obliterates any flavor from its ingredients. I have been a beer drinker for over 40 years and have sampled most styles in that time. I am sorry to say that Sour Monkey is one of the worst flavored beers I have tasted. In fact I poured the last four bottles of the six pack I purchased down the drain.
July 5, 2021 @ 11:57 pm
Suck my ass peter