Liefmans Frambozenbier

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

Hazy red body with a raspberry and sweet fruity aroma. Tart yet sweet, aftertaste is tart with lots of raspberries of course and some mineral. A very nice easy drinker.

(750 ml bottle, best before end of "2.005") Pours fairly cloudy dark reddish-amber. Small tight slightly pinkish biscuit head holds firm. Aroma of raspberries. Very nice lacing. Mouthfeel silky smooth. Intense but not overdone raspberry flavor, also a little honeyish. Raspberry more concentrated at bottom of bottle. Certainly not an expert on this style but this one got me excited. Great.

Bottle: Nice tart raspberry aroma. May resemble a sour raspberry candy aroma slightly, but I like it. Pours a transparent mohagony with a small off-white head that quickly fades to a ring around the glass. Much like the kriek, this resembles a raspberry soda with a better mouthfeel. Sweet raspberry from start to finish with the slightest hints of tartness and even lighter hints of bitterness in the finish. Traces of woodiness are there as well. I like this in small doses, but the sugary sweetness starts to wear on me after a while.

This beer offers a good hearty raspberry aroma. It is a reddish-brown with a decent off-white head and good lacing. The acidic level in this beer tends to dry the mouth out a little. The raspberries in this beer produce a nice healthy tartness. This beer is sweet and fades smoothly leaving a mild tart raspberry taste lingering.

The aroma is much more BEER like than other lambics I have had. Dark red-ish foamy head. Deep red body, not clear...but not really cloudy either...I think opaque is the right word here. The nose is very tart, the flavor mellows out to a vey clear raspberry taste, with a short clean finish. Overall a little thinner then I had expected it to be. the aromoa is very misleading.

Deep, dark purple, with a browning rim, which would suggest some age. There is a good steady stream of tiny bubbles, giving a thin head. Despite the hint of age in the colour, this is amazingly fresh on the palate, it bursts with a juicy raspberry nose, which carries through to the palate. There is a clean acidity, with a noticable sweetness, without being cloying. The finish lingers for ages...a superb beer!

There is a festive aura about this beer perhaps from unveiling the bottle of its delicate wrapping or popping the cork to release fragrant puffs of air. Something about fruits in beer bids for a joyous celebration. A cautious pour produces a fizzy beige head which dissipates to a light sheet covering the dark but reassuring red mahogany body. Raspberries always have a comforting odor to me, reminding of home and picking them in my grandmother’s garden. Like my own Proustian madeleines, the scent of this beer conjures such warm memories that may immensely amplify my appreciation of the simple liquid. The nose itself is of course dominated by the aroma of authentic fresh raspberries, not jam nor juice but the smell of a real raspberry bush. Sour cherries and rich brown sugar provide complexity and balance to the bouquet. The flavor is light and more beer-like than I expected, especially in comparison to Lindeman’s effort which felt syrupy and forced. Beneath the berries appear a soft citrus flavor not unlike ripe clementines. For my taste, this is by far the most enjoyable fruit beer I have had. Refreshing in the summer, merry in the winter, I think Liefmans has produced an excellent ale which I am excited to enjoy again.

Robe rousse aux reflets bruns surmontée d’une mousse blanche. Arômes de framboise et de liège. Saveurs de framboise, de fraise, de citron, de bois et de liège.