Harpoon 100 Barrel Series #11 - Framboise

Formerly brewed at Harpoon Brewery
Style: Fruit Beer
Boston, Massachusetts USA

Raspberry, juicy medium toast malt, strawberries, oakey vanilla. Apples in the background. Red copper body, pinkish off white head that fades relatively quickly. Sweetish raspberry flavor up front quickly followed by dryish/sour raspberry. A bit of toasty malt in the finish. Meh.

This was a bit of a letdown. When I buy a moderately expensive, limited edition beer, I expect it to be much more flavorful than this. It’s like a "light" version of a lambic, only with more tartness.

Bottle: Pink tinted amber, somewhat hazy, large pink head, very fizzy and dies quite quickly, light carbonation, lacks lacing.   Fruity nose, in the sour sense, berry of sorts but not distinctly raspberry.   Tart fruitiness immediately up front, but it vanishes rather quickly.   I am happy that it doesn’t seem very artificial, but its lacking in some sweetness.   I don’t mind it being tart, but please balance it out a bit.   Body and mouthfeel are quite average.   Lingering finish of tart fruit, or should I say tart unripened fruit.   Not bad, but needs to be a bit sweeter and more lively in appearance and in the mouth.   It sure is difficult to compete with New Glarus ey?  Thanks for the freebie Dan!

I’m glad this one got the more generic fruit beer label as it falls well short of a lambic. Ruby red and subtle carbonation with some mellow rasberry syrup scents. I couldn’t pick up on any of the barnyard elements commonly found in most examples of a lambic. Taste is very sour and stale like a rasberry pop tart. Weak mouthfeel.

Ruby red with a dense pinkish head that slowly fades to reveal delicate lace. Aromas are raspberry, of course, with wheat, hops an bready yeast. Flavor is raspberry, tart, not sweet, with the underpinnings of a weiss. Malt is nowhere to be found, hops are abundant. Nice mouthfeel - fizzy but not too thin. Fruits and Lambics are not among my favorites but this would be a refreshing cooler ar a nice champagne substitute with a fruit and cheese or dessert course.

Sour, pungent nose, hinting that there may be some artificial rasberry flavor in here. The body is dark coppery in color, and one cannot see through it. No head and lighter carbonation. The flavor is very thin and weak. Hardly any fruit in this one. Also, it is quite sour, but not pleasantly balanced like the lambics tend to be. It is bitter and harsh.

Why do I keep trying these Harpoon 100 Barrel beers? Would I continue to patronize a restaurant that served me a steak covered in live fly larvae? Nay! And yet I continue to imbibe these half-baked, masturbatory "experiments." Anyway, to the beer - pours a dark cloudy red with a fizzy head that disappears completely, leaving it looking like a glass of kool-aid - rather full aroma of fresh raspberries, some melon and a hint of musty, earthiness - thin and watery in the mouth - kind of tastes like watered-down fruit punch - sour raspberry flavors hide underneath a kind of stale grainy flavor - the finish is chalky, with the distinct taste of sea salt - raspberry-infused brine - probably the worst in this series so far.

22 oz bottle. Pretty close to opaque berry-blood color, big fizzy head dies into a creamy thick lasting ring around the edges....aroma of fresh, slightly unripe red raspberries with hints of honey, butterscotch, bit of pale earthy malt...so far, so good, but on the tongue, alas, this is a typical insipid brewpub-type raspberry wheat, faintly tart/sour, tasting of cheap watery raspberry juice, strong grainy sourness, a bit of lactic acid, with a heavily carbonated brackish finish. Too bad, it started off quite nicely.