Great Divide Wild Raspberry Ale

Brewed by Great Divide Brewing Company
Style: Fruit Beer
Denver, Colorado USA

This beer pours a deep ruby red to copper color with a fairly sizable head from the start but it did subside quickly. The head had a slight lavender tint to it with a minor level of lacing. The aroma was unsurprisingly dominated by raspberries, malts and hints of syrupyness. The flavor is medium bodied and reminds me a lot of raspberry syrup at the international house of pancakes. Fairly bland watered down flavor...little malt presence but a sticky honeyness to the raspberry. Fairly active carbonation leads into a mess which flattens out as soon as its in the mouth past 1/2 a second. Unimpressively boring in most respects and to boot Im not even a raspberry fan so consider me not disappointed. Dry finish but nastily syrupy and cardboardy.

Pour clear with a redish purple tone, and a beige head. Very effervescent. Oddly, this beer isn’t over run by raspberries. I do catch some malt character in the nose. The fruit is not the main attraction here. I kind of like that. Not overly sweet. The tartness of the berries balances the malte well. Not bad for a fruit beer.

Cranberry-brown in color with a massive, frothy head that has quite excellent staying power. Lots of yeast chunks floating around and stuck within the head, I had to look twice as I thought they may had been raspberry seeds. (Probably should have poored more carefully; thankfully the chunklets all settled to the bottom). Quite a tart raspberry aroma. Raspberry tartness is much more subdued in the flavor, as the sweet malt really runs (ruins?) the show. The fruitiness of this is surprisingly and disappointingly low, resulting in a rather bland-tasting beer. Carbonation level is too high as well, contributing to the problem. I’m usually a sucker for fruit beers that use real fruit in the process, but sadly this one falls on its face.

Strong raspberry aroma, sweet. Pretty ruddish-purplish color, cloudy, minimal white head. Sweet raspberry taste at first, tart, then finishes smooth. Won’t be puttin’ any hairs on your chest, but tasty.

12oz. bottle. Deep ruby amber hue. Small pinkish head. Tart raspberry and subtle malt aromatics. Heavy natural raspberry flavor, hints of malty sweetness. Resdiual raspberry flavor in the finish. Mouthfeel is light and fairly dry.

I always have a bit of trepidation when dealing with fruit beers because so few are particularly good. Sampled from a 12 oz brown bottle this beer poured a dark salmon color with a huge pink head. The aroma is sweet berry. The flavor is sweet berry without much to back it up. There is no real beer flavor. It tastes more like a wine cooler. The body is immensely carbonated which makes the beer a bit hard to drink. The only plus side is that the berry flavor itself is rather pleasant.

Bottle. Pours very bold ruby with fluffy off-white head. The aroma is raspberry and hops. The flavor is unapologetically raspberry, with a bit of sweet malt underneath. Drinkable, but I’m not much of a fan of fruit beers in the first place.

Bottled, sampled at 4:ans Ölkällare, Kungälv. Red-copper colour. Synthetic, sulphury nose. Vague raspberry notes in flavour. Light body.