Sea Dog Raspberry Wheat Ale

Brewed by Sea Dog Brewing (Shipyard Brewing Co.)
Style: Fruit Beer
Topsham, Maine USA

Yellow, highly carbonated, small white head. Aroma and flavour are both mostly raspberry. Aroma is very sugary. Flavour is too water.

Bottle... Clear, yellow ale with a small, fizzy, white head. The aroma is of lemon, wildflower honey and raspberry. Medium sweet and lightly tart with a pronounced raspberry syrup flavor. Medium-bodied and a touch oily with fizzy carbonation. Not as good as their blueberry wheat ale. Tastes like a Berliner Weisse with a little too much raspberry syrup added.

Pours to a huge fizzy/foamy off-white head that sits atop a deep glowing amber body. Tons of visible carbonation. The aroma is raspberry saltwater taffy. The flavor would normally be easily apparent, but the palate is WAAAY over-carbonated and makes me cringe. The flavor is a toasted saltwater raspberry toffee thingamabob. Not very good. Drain pour. I think I was able to drink an ounce or so.

Bottle. Small white fizzy that mostly diminished, poor lacing, carbonated, transparent, and a gold hue. Aroma far outweighed the flavor on this beer. Sweet, tart, tangy, raspberry nose. Flavor was very uninvitiing and unpleasant tasting - sweet, acidic, tart, tangy and raspberry. A huge disappointment. Tingly mouthfeel. Light body.

The aroma is wretched sewage and rotten raspberries along with cheap malt liquor. A real treat, let me tell you. The appearance is unremarkable with a slight haze to the pale gold. Of course it would have a small head. The flavor is odd. Sadly it has some of that crappy rotten fruit taste to go along with a nice wheat beer taste. (Too bad they couldn’t just make a plain jane wheat beer instead of this.) There is however a pee, I mean wee, tiny bit of raspberry near the finish, but not enough to make this worth having again. If you are ever offered this beer, respectfully decline.

I would say that this is better than the Abita Purple Haze (the closest approximation that I’ve had before) but there’s something about the raspberry tartness that just doesn’t fit in with the malt character of this beer which, I think, is a bit on the darker, heavier side of the spectrum anyway. The aroma is really fresh and sweet and nice though. Fairly dry on the palate, reminiscent of a framboise lambik, except with fucked up malts.

As a fan of fruit beers this is not the best, but not undrinkable. The raspberry flavor can be overpowering ans a little too sweet. If I see it on tap I will have one, but I do not seek it out.

This beer offers the nose an aroma consisting of raspberries and vinegar. It is gold colored and only produces a glaze of foam. This is flat, watery, and thin. It has an artificial raspberry taste that fades very bitterly.