Liefmans Frambozenbier

Formerly brewed at Liefmans (Moortgat)
Style: Sour Ale
Oudenaarde, Belgium

#100
["Paperbottle" from Vinens Verden]. Thisone I’ve selected to be my beer no. 100, because it’s one of the best fruit sour ales I ever have tasted. Very much a sweet beer, but it’s ok. If you are in the mood of drinking more sour fruit ales, thisone is not your choice. It’s just a real summerbeer for aperitif sessions.

Bottle. Pours ruby red, thin pink head. Aroma is tart raspberry. Flavor is the same and not too sweet. This is very drinkable.

[Sampled at SBF -06] Redish amber. Bubbly head. A lot of sweet raspberries in both aroma and flavour. Some sour notes aswell and some rubber.

(Stockholm Beer Festival 2006) Reddish/amber, white head. Raspberry aroma, oaky notes. Sweetish raspberry flavor, rubber and oak notes.

Bottle from Mecklenburg Garden off the wall and chilled. Poured dark red with a minimal fizzy off-white head that was mostly lasting with fair lacing. Moderate tart raspberry aroma. Light to medium body with soft carbonation. Solid tart fruit flavor with a medium sweet finish of moderate duration. Refreshing drink.

Nice beer. dark red color with a head that was almost pink. Big time raspberry aroma leading into a flavor just as raspberry packed but not overwhelming. Sweet and slightly tart. A

I can already begin feeling summer coming to a close. It’s not unusual. I’ve always been sensitive to the seasons around this time, maybe because I was born into it, but the slight creaks and shifts in the way the world turns become more audible. A very natural inclination to keep warm, eat and sleep is more acute. Rest is celebrated with the same energy that it was shunned with during the summer. Merriment is had over the table instead of over a field, and the whole world becomes a very small and familiar community, all of whom begin retiring to bed. In the ebb of heat and labor we naturally we reach for a relaxant; something to justify our work and soothe are throbbing limbs. For some it’s a smoke, for others it’s a book, but for me it’s a good drink, of which little expresses the fruits of toil better than Liefman’s Frambozenbier. It is a beer with a soft touch, like a hand across the brow. It surreptitiously flourishes from a simple candied drink to a complex and elegantly sincere beer. It is a roseate drink, semi-cloudy and beating with a pomegranate red that lifts up to a bubbly coral cumulous layer. A misleading vapor of strawberries glides up from the glass, complemented by hints of raspberries, honey and apples; an orchard in a single whiff. The taste too smacks of genuine fruit sweetness, purely handled, extracted and brewed. It bubbles and tickles the palate while the blended dessert flavors lull the drinker into a hypnotic state of satisfaction. Nothing in Liefmans Frambozenbier suggests any human hand was used in its manufacture. All the fruitiness, tartness and more “serious elements” mimic flavors found most commonly away from human craft. It is almost crude to think a brewery was used to make this drink with all its coughing, hacking and rattling industrial parts contrasting with a serenely gnarled branch drooping with sugary sweets. No, this Frambozenbier is wrapped in the colors, smells and tastes of a whimpering summer, fading to a glowing ember for the rest of what I predict will be a very pleasant fall.

Bottle. Cloudy ruby red, pinkish head. Incredible aroma of raspberries. Tart, acidic. Perhaps a little overpowered by the raspberrries. Very nice.