Bottle shared 6/10/16.
Blood red appearance with deep crimson and magenta tints. Moderate clarity with a violet-flecked, light-beige head that is small but dense and shows moderately-strong retention.
Huge raspberry jam nose is dotted with black pepper-like raspberry seed notes and a good deal of vanilla-honey character from the malt. Juicy/jammy to the max and with moderate acidity but mostly from the raspberries. Not a whole lot of yeast/bacteria quality at this point. No alcohol or flaw.
The jam translates completely in to the mouth and it’s rather thick, sluggish and sweet for this style of beer. Not that it’s problematic, really, and it’s pretty obvious they have purposefully made a beer that will age marvelously; drying out and growing much more funky. It begs the question, "Why didn’t they age it longer in-house before releasing it?". Personally, I’m not a fan of it currently, but I could see some people liking the lack of sourness and huge fruit character so I don’t think it’s any affront to beer geeks to release it this young. Of course, this all assumes it does dry out considerably and gains a lot more funk. As is, this is a score for its current state and I will definitely make a point to revisit in a few years.