La Choulette Framboise

Brewed by Brasserie La Choulette
Style: Fruit Beer
Hordain, France

Bottle. Ruby colour with a small beige head. Nise raspberry aroma and taste. Medium body with a sweet finish.

Corked Bottle. Poured hazy reddish brown with an average fizzy off-white head that lasted with good lacing. Heavy sweet tart fruity aroma. Light to medium body with a smooth texture. Medium sweet fruity balanced flavor and a medium sweetet finish of moderate duration. Good spicy dinner brew.

12 oz bottle. Ruby red pour with a decent pinkish fizzy head. Aroams were huge raspberry...sweet....sugar. Flavors were not quite as sweet as expected. Some tartness and a touch of bitter to make it taste like beer. Some dustiness in the malt too. Pretty good actually/

Sampled from 750 mL bottle at River’s Bend on 1/05/2007. Thanks Matt! -- La Choulette Framboise pours an opaque reddish purple color with a foamy pink-colored head. The bouquet is fresh raspberries, seeds and all! The flavor is mostly raspberry with some light flavors of the base bierre de garde and some acidity coming out toward the end. The sweetness of this beer is well constrained. It isn’t nearly as sweet as Lindemann’s Framboise or as tart as something like New Glarus Raspberry Tart or as sour as a lambic; it is just right - not too sweet and not too sour. The mouth feel is also just right - soft (not over carbonated) and delicate (not too light or too heavy) on the palate. I really enjoyed this framboise and should have picked up a bottle for my wife since she would probably really like it too!

750 mL bottle. Pours dark amber with ivory head and lots of carbonation. The aroma is raspberry and hints of candy. Flavor is raspberry and a little bit of cookies. Dries a little toward the finish. Decent, but it could certainly use some sourness.

750.Beer is clear, medium-hued, rose-tinted brown. Head is average-sized, frothy, off-white/pale pink, mostly and quickly dimishing.<P> Aroma is earthy and sparkling with berry. Malty with light notes of toasted grain, shortbread; Hoppy with a trace of resin/pine, light herb, light note of breakfast tea; Yeasty with a moderate note of dank basement; Moderate-to-heavy note of jammy raspberry.<P> The flavor is moderately sweet, lightly acidic with an average-length, warmish, trace bittersweet, lightly acidic/sour finish.<P> The body is light, the texture is watery and the carbonation is average.

This is certainly better than your average raspberry American Wheat! Fruit on a BDG base is an infinitely better alternative to the american stuff. Aroma is pronounced raspberry, slightly sweet, slightly tart, slightly cheap, but unrestrained from its base beer. Very slight funk in there, as well. Gentle, very drinkable in the mouth, smooth, pure raspberry with little else. So drinkable that I was near done with the bottle before I even remembered to rate it. Can’t commend any kind of complexity but I enjoyed this.

Bottle, Dodgy Deli on Cowley Road. Lots of slightly pink dirty white head on a ruby pour. Dusty raspberry jam aroma and a little butter. Flavor is really new to me for a fruit beer. Not the tartness of a Belgian, not the artificially dosed up fruity wheat beer thing. Just sort of a jammy, muted, old berry flavor. Which may sound like a criticism, but isn’t--it tastes real. Heavily carbonated, making it feel a little aggressive, but it works alright here. This is a rough around the edges, but interesting sort or beer. It’s got one foot in the wine world, where the fermented fruit isn’t expected to taste like the unfermented.