Fitgers Champagne of the North

Brewed by Fitgers Brewhouse
Style: Berliner Weisse
Duluth, Minnesota USA

RBSG 2007 Grand Tasting. Clear golden body with a small white head. Sweet apple aroma. Puckering sour flavor with an apple background.

RBSG 2007. Pours to a hazy coppery orange body with a very thin white head. The aroma is yellow apple skins and lactic metal. The flavor is really sour. Lactic acid galore. Funky cheese sourness and pale toasty malts on the backend once the sour dies down. The palate is really sour lactic acid everywhere. A bunch of cheerios hit soon after.

Approximately 1.5 oz. sample at the Grand Tasting of the RateBeer Summer Gathering 2007 in the Twin Cities, MN on July 23, 2007. This was the thirteenth of 26 beers that I sampled and rated during the tasting. From a growler that badgerben (I think) picked up at the brewpub. Sour aroma features apple, crabapple, and honey. Pours a hazy light brown/brass with an almost green tint. Super sour flavor. Like the liquid version of a really sour sucking candy. This is the most sour beer that I’ve ever had. Very sweet finish. Sour aftertaste. Light body. Frothy in the palate. Intense and very cool beer. I was warned not to try this beer, but I’m glad that I ignored the warnings.

RBSG 2007 Grand Tasting

I have to admit, having never tried a berlinner weisse and hearing stories about how these are too sour without the use of syrup, I was a little itimidated to try this. But, I was only taking a small sample and was really intrigued by it. Aroma is close to apple cider. Not the sour I expected. The nose is more sweet than sour. But one taste, and the puckering sour is easily noticed. Not overbearing by any means though. Dishwater color, not the most attractive beer. However, the combination of apple, pear, and sour makes this beer unique and a winner in my book!

RBSG 07 Grand Tasting beer #8. Gold color. Sour nose with a yeasty hint. I have more comments, but I can’t quite make them out ;)

Murky/cloudy copper colour with a decent sized fizzy head. Bit of sourness on the nose. The taste is really great; sour, tart, dry, wheaty. Lively mouth feel. I really liked it.

Draft at the brewpub. My second Berliner weisse. It is much more sour than the Kindl I had previously. The light aroma has just a little butter, very little in fact, and it also smells sour but not like a lambic. It is however, very sour, even more sour than many lambics I have tasted. There is also lots of yeast throughout. A cloudy, dark orange beer. I thought Berliners were lighter. Very little wheat beer. Very nice overall.

My first Berliner Weisse comes from a brewpub in Northern Minnesota. Who would have thought?! Murky copper color with a thick head. Small aroma of wheat. The taste is both what I expected and more so. The sourness is there, but not to bombastic proportions like a lot of Lambics. Nice tartness rounds it out. Lots of wheat, candi sugar, caramel and honey. This is quite a treat.