Liefmans Frambozenbier

Formerly brewed at Liefmans (Moortgat)
Style: Sour Ale
Oudenaarde, Belgium

Bottle, Maproom, Chicago. I was fully expecting this to be a guilty pleasure and a cop out. I was feeling a bit drunker than I wanted, and decided on a smaller, more female beer to cool the jets and let my liver catch up. As it was, this wasn’t as girly as I was expecting. It actually tasted like beer at moments through all of the delicious raspberry, mostly on the finish, where I caught some bitterness. The flavor, while strong, was not overpowering, and it was all well balanced. I felt like making popsicles out of this.

Pours a nice cloudy reddish brown, more magenta colored from the raspberries. Aroma is pure raspberries, sweet and sharp. Taste is sweet and sour, a very nice blend of raspberries with no real taste of ’beer’ to speak of. Slightly carbonated, but the flavor seems to sparkle in your mouth.

This is nice but average, which is to say that this is an easily enjoyable style. It pours a murky red-brown, with only the last bit of sediment doing much to produce a little bit of white head (very little). Big raspberry aroma, but not so much fresh raspberries as much as raspberry fruit roll-ups (dried fruit kid’s food). Nice flavor, moderately sweet and mildly sour, obviously raspberry all over the place. Decent palate, marked by the dense carbonation and fairly mild hit on the tongue. Nice, though not as sour as I would have liked. I could drink this by the gallon.

This is an excellent beer if you like raspberries. The colour is a bit off putting--more brown than red or pink.

Muddy colored beer with a creamy lasting head. Sweet and sour raspberry aroma - thick and syrupy. Flavor is sweet at first but ends in a nice sourish biding finish. Very flavorfull and fresh with plenty of raspberry.

Slightly hazy amber color. Sweet pleasant drink, with a hint of raspberry sourness.

Bottle at DBF 2004. Nice appearance, red with nice head. The aroma is raspberries, some sourness, very nice and pleasant. Flavor is raspberries, sourness, balsamic vinegar. Very nice and balanced beer. Very refreshing!

Bottled. The aroma is pure raspberries and although mouth watering it is just not beer. The colour is very red, again appetizing but just not beer. The flavour though is a fantastic mixture of raspberry fruit and beer. There is a definitely ale feel to the background and those raspberries just keep coming through. Why is there a need for alcopops in the world when a fruit beer is this tasty yet still fun enough to appeal to all?