6.6

Appearance - 6 | Aroma - 7 | Flavor - 7 | Texture - 6 | Overall - 6.5

Raspberry beer of top fermentation, brewed at Boelens for a raspberry farm in Melsele, a village in my home region locally reputed for its raspberries and strawberries. Thick and moussy, audibly fizzing, lightly lacing, 'dirty' off-pinkish white, stable head on a misty brownish-tinged ruddy vermillion coloured beer. Aroma of indeed real red raspberries though not in a very fresh way, raspberry bushes, dusty old cotton cloth, old moist cardboard, sweet cherry tomato, sweetclover, dried chili powder somehow, white bread and old bread crumbs, earthy beetroot, honey, red apple, banana peel. Evidently fruity onset with clear raspberry juice, both sweet and mildly sour, mingled with apple- and banana-like esters, lively carbonated with rather fierce yet refined and therefore non-distracting fizz, supple and bit soapy body; bread-crusty core with slight caramelly edge, remaining soaked in raspberry juice, even showing some tannic effects in the end from - I suppose - raspberry seeds. Low but noticeable, earthy hop bitterness blends with clove-like phenols, lingering esters and strong yeasty breadiness, while this play of sour and sweet goes on till the last drop, filling the beer with raspberry juice from onset to finish; a slight degree of oxidation is noticeable somewhere, but not in an annoying way. I was dreading this one a bit, to be honest, but it is not the lemonade-like fruit syrup one so often sees: it keeps a certain balance between sweet, sour and bitter, with enough raspberry to convince the fruit lovers, in a very natural way; all in all, this is not half bad, even if these more 'beery' apéritif fruit beers that have popped up throughout Belgium in the past years are not my personal cup of tea. Better than expected, in short.