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Cherry Red Risalamande
Our Rating: 3.50 / 5
An absurdly thick, cherry-red smoothie-braggot hybrid that looks like pudding and smells like vanilla, cherry and bitter almond pit. Fun for some, texturally chaotic for others. Zero carbonation, metallic edges, dessert energy without risalamande accuracy. Divisive, ridiculous, oddly charming, very Mad Scientist.
Beer Name: Cherry Red Risalamande
Brewery: Mad Scientist
Beer Style: Ice Cream Smoothie Sour Braggot
Alcohol: 5.1%
Taste notes: Cherry, vanilla, almond-like bitterness, dark berries, creamy, metallic finish
Serving: Can
Serving Size: 440 ml (14.88 fl. oz.)
Thick Enough to be Cherry Pudding
Man, it’s a thick one. You tilt the can, and the whole thing moves like it’s trying to negotiate its way out of the can rather than freely pouring. “Spin it before you sip it,” the label instructs us, which feels less like advice and more like a warning from someone who knows what they’ve done. Mad Scientist isn’t joking around. This is the kind of liquid that makes you question whether a straw would be disrespectful or simply practical.
Once it finds its way into the glass, the colour is almost comic-book intense with a deep cherry red sliding toward bordeaux, and it’s opaque enough that light gives up halfway through. There’s not a bubble in sight, and not even a suggestion of foam. It’s just a glossy, fruit-thick surface that looks like it could stain a soul if you stared long enough.
The first sniff hits with milky vanilla, cherry, and something almond-ish that leans more bitter pit than marzipan. There’s dark berry too, but it hovers in that weird space between “I recognise this” and “no idea what it’s meant to be.” We joke about whether this counts as beer, dessert, or an accident in a dairy lab, but the aroma does at least line up with the name; cherry, creamy, almond-leaning… just not in a particularly risalamande way.
By the time we raise the glass for a first sip, we already know we’re in for something… dense. Whether that’s good or bad is still up for debate
Braggot? Smoothie? Dairy Lab Prototype?
Calling this a braggot technically makes sense; there’s honey in the ingredient list, but none of us actually taste it. If anything, the honey is playing the role of “silent investor,” present on paper but not showing up to the meetings. Maybe the honey roundedness is what makes the cherry read less tart and fresh, but then again, maybe not. The beer leans heavily into its ice-cream-smoothie identity instead: milk powder, whey, thickeners, fruit purée proportions that probably needed their own forklift. The result is a body that lands between smoothie sour, pastry sour, and “did we just drink yoghurt?”
Giving a quick nod to the BJCP guidelines, this doesn’t fit any existing lane. Smoothie sours aren’t codified, braggots are supposed to show honey character, and fruited sours generally feature a bit of acidity and carbonation. This has none of that; the carbonation is effectively zero, head retention is a rumour, and the tartness is barely more than cherry bitterness. But honestly? We don’t mind category chaos as long as the liquid is good. This is just the usual ‘looking at it through a standardised lens’.
And here’s where the room splits.
Some of us enjoy the vanilla-forward, cherry-adjacent flavour that echoes dessert without fully committing. The dessert-like texture, thickness overload and full gas of flavours are a plus for some of us. Others are hit with the metallic almond bitterness on the finish and immediately clock out, and the mouthfeel of blended gummy bears isn’t helping. The cherry flavour lands in a strange middle zone: not fresh, not synthetic, it’s just… there. There’s enough to frame the beer, but not enough to define it. The almond note, meanwhile, doesn’t read like almond at all; it reads like licking a spoon that’s been left in a cherry compote pot too long.
Untappd seems thrilled, floating around a 4.09 average. We’re way more divided. For some, it’s a fun, silly, over-the-top dessert drink with enough charm to pull off the concept. For others, it’s a textural fever dream: too thick, too grainy, too metallic, and nowhere near actual risalamande.
But hey, you’ve got to be mad or a scientist to make this. Good thing Cherry Red Risalamande is from Mad Scientist, then.
Our final scores:
Jesper: 4.00 / 5
Casper: 4.00 / 5
Laurits: 3.25 / 5
Viktor: 2.75 / 5
Final Average Score: 3.50 / 5
