Zipline Brewing Company - Cherry Quad

Zipline’s Cherry Quad is a variant of the brewery’s Abbey-style ale, St. Boden. This bigger, Belgian-style quadrupel also sees the addition of Balaton cherries—which provide a fresh, juicy cherry counterpoint to the caramel and deep dark fruit of the core beer. This is a deftly sculpted, surprisingly streamlined quad with great secondary character courtesy its cherries.

Cherry Quad pours a honeyed, golden-caramel color with scarlet hues. A well-formed, well-retained foam leaves nice lacing around the perimeter of the glass. Generous degrees of tart cherry and honeyed malt land first in the aroma, followed by chewy caramels and toffee and ripe dark fruit. Overall, there’s a generous quad focus of caramelization and dark fruit at the core of this beer, offering up additional notes of dates and toffee and hints of burnt sugar.

There’s a reasonable degree of carbonation, lightening the feel, as Cherry Quad leads with a generous impact of caramel and red fruits. While the caramelization is a key component, the delicate backdrop of clove and white pepper provides a bitter phenolic balance here. Lots of delicious dark fruits, dates, raisins, figs and brown sugar throughout this beer. The full focus of this Belgian-style quad rolls out over time, adding the peppery yeast and clove, along with subtle fig and orange peel, as this warms up in one’s glass. The Balaton cherries provide key vibrancy, a touch of welcome acidity, and the net result is arguably the easiest drinking of the four Zipline beers in this special offer. A rich quad with cherries that accentuate it perfectly.

There’s already a modest degree of caramelization present, such that we’d be inclined to go easy on additional aging. For pairings, the emphasis on cherry and caramel have us wanting a chargrilled bacon burger or juicy pork tenderloin. Alternatively: cherry cheesecake/ice cream.