Sea Dog Raspberry Wheat Ale

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

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.

Poured a bit darker than the blueberrry version. More fruit in the nose on this one. Malty berry flavor rules. Some hop bitterness stumbles into the game here. Graininess is evident, but I doubt it’s due to much "wheat". Finishes a bit dry, tries to be decent but comes up short.

A dark golden color with a moderate white head. The aroma is mainly raspberries with a hint of wheat bread. The flavor falls flat and not way you expected considering the strong fruit aroma. The raspberry presence isnt that strong and Im picking up some wheat and corn. The mouthfeel is rather dry and carbonated. Nothing much to this one.

Light golden color with a thin lid tiny white bubbles. Raspberry salt water toffee aromas. Just a hint of pale malt. Very light and slightly fizzy in feel. Again a raspberry taffy flavor with a lightly salt linger. Too synthetic in flavor for me it enjoy. Light grass flavor even seem to work their way in late quaff.

Appears a light gold with a fizzling out white head. Tiny amounts of carbonation are to be seen. No lacing to speak of. Smell is of corn syrup, raspberry syrup, and honey. Taste is a mild step above the aromas but it’s not that good either. Mouthfeel is average with a syupy, oily slickness rolling down the tongue.

(Bottle, best before 12/05) Pours pinkish yellow/amber, cloudy when bottom yeast added. Thin fizzy head disappears, no lacing. Aroma faintly fruity, not much else. Mouthfeel kind of like seltzer water, a little fizzy, thinnish. Tastes weakly berry-like, a little wheaty. Has a gluey taste in beginning as well, then goes away. Basically seems like a combination of weakly flavored seltzer water and amateur wheat beer. Surprising because the Sea Dog blueberry is good.

(12 oz bottle: Obtained in trade with jjpm74, thanks John!) This is in the running for the worst raspberry beer I’ve ever tasted. The flavor is all perfume, fake raspberry flavoring, and artificial sugar. Whatever wheat flavor there might be is easily overpowered. I do get a hint of vanilla in the finish, and that could be the lone bright spot in the flavor. Aroma is also all artificial raspberry and perfume, but it smells better than this beer tastes. Body is fairly light, but the finish is very watery. Unlike many berry beers, the color is a pale golden without the slightest tint toward red, pink or purple. And for a supposed wheat beer, the clarity is perfect. Really, this looks like your average premium lager, complete with the steady stream of carbonation bubbles. The white head pours small and quickly fades to a ring. Boy, just a terrible raspberry beer, and a perfect example of why I have such a prejudiced view toward this style. Most are simply not very enjoyable, but some (like this beer) are downright offensive.

This kind of tastes like its got the rasberries added to an average wheat beer as opposed to being brewed within it. It doesnt suck as much as my packers do though.