Santa Fe Sangre de Frambuesa

Brewed by Santa Fe Brewing Company
Style: Fruit Beer
Santa Fe, New Mexico USA

Nice red color with a pink head. Aroma has a lot of raspberries, some tartness. Flavor is sweet and fruity, very noticeable raspberry and nice carbonation. Pretty big too, not a wimpy fruit beer, a bit of alcohol on the finish too.

750 ml bottle. Bottle # 245. Sharp raspberry aroma. Amber red body with white head. Has a good raspberry flavor, fruity, doesn’t have the sharp tartness of some fruit beer which was good for me. Does have some alcohol warming effect on the body. Good brew.

750 ml bottle - thanks riverside!! bottle #241; light red and clear, booze and cherries on the nose with spicy and fruity flavors; a little hot, but quite tasty with dry bone finish; kind of like a raspberry vodka type of drink

Sampled at 2008 Sunfest. Raspberry nose, very warm going down - no way to disguise the high alcohol content on this beer. Cranberry in color with super raspberry flavor.

Bottle 243 of 3156; Sampled July 2009
Well, I always seem to have one or two of this in the back of the beer fridge. I beer I am absolutely dreading opening. The last one was Dogfish Head’s Fort, similarly again is another, likely too sweet, raspberry beer. A solid pour nets me a frothy, three-finger thick, pink tinged, dirty off-white colored head. The beer is a deep, dark plum red color that shows a clear, bright red color when held up to the light. Sweet, candied raspberry notes are the first thing I notice about the aroma. No matter how hard I try though, I can’t really notice anything else about the nose; there is perhaps a touch of alcohol warming here, but this is actually fairly tame considering the strength of this beer.

The beer is not quite as sweet as I had feared; in fact it is quite dry for a beer of this strength. Up front there is a light raspberry note, but unfortunately this just takes a wrong turn somewhere. The finish is actually foul tasting; it tastes of rotting raspberries and chemically harsh raspberry extract. A bit of hot alcohol in the finish even adds a touch of tartness (though this light tartness is also likely added by the raspberries). The base beer isn’t overly noticeable here (this tastes mostly of rancid raspberries and vodka), but there is a touch of toasty malt character that comes through from time to time. This beer is actually pretty light bodied (especially given its strength) and this couples pretty well with the effervescent carbonation, but somehow it still leaves me wanting a bit more (this is likely the fault of the flavor more than anything, but I can’t stop it from influencing the texture as well).

The aroma of this beer is not bad if you really like raspberries, the flavor however just isn’t something that I want to be drinking, though I might of used a bit of hyperbole is stating how bad it is. How this ever won an award at GABF is beyond me. This beer is not the worst thing ever, but I was certainly rightly afraid to open it up. Santa Fe is brewing some really interesting and tasty beers, unfortunately this is not one of them (though it is interesting I suppose).

750, corked, baled, and foiled. Thanks, RiversideAK! Pours clear red with a lacy white head. Oaky raspberry nose. Light body and medium carbonation. Fresh raspberry taste.

CPLYFO shared by Sebletitje. 750 ml bottle. Pours a very jammy hazy violet red with a thin fizzy head. aroma is very fruity- red rasp, tart, with some phenolic and bretty funk and some nice fruity sweetness. Flavor though falls very short as it is thin, rasp juicy, earth phenolic and plastic-like with a tart finish and as it warms the alcohol comes through making it a bit hot.

750mL bottle (thanks to TBS, from the Nearly Perfect 10 trade). Bottle 251 of 3156. Pours hazy ruby, capped with a pinkish white head. Raspberry syrup aroma, mildly tart but a bit too sweet. Flavor is synthetic raspberry, sugar, and some yeast. Reminds me of sweetarts.