Sly Fox Black Raspberry Reserve

Brewed by Sly Fox Brewhouse
Style: Fruit Beer
Royersford and Phoenixville, Pennsylvania USA

sugar aroma belies a nice understated raspberry flavor. Ruby and clear no head but nice carb. Good smooth and a good ratio of fruit to beer.

Draft->flute: Pours a spare head that exhibits some lacing atop of a clear ruby-ish body with some carbonation. The aroma is of raspberry, light alcohol, hops, and grape must. The palate is medium, thin texture with the flavor being of average duration, moderately acidic and finishing like vinegar. Smells like lambic, tastes like raspberry wine vinegar.

Can imagine drinking this on a boat on a hot summer day. More soda pop than beer. My wife loved it and she hates all beer (and loves sugar).

Bottle: Poured a reddish strawberry color with a thin pink head. The aroma was that of raspberries. The flavor was fruity with raspberries and very refreshing. This beer makes a great dessert beer. Easily my favorite fruit beer.

Dark purple and pink colored body. Nose is a mixture of sweet and musty/drier berries, wood, starches, etc - it smells quite nice. Flavorwise, though, it’s a different story. Candy sweet, plasticy, medicinal even, with a twang that’s hard to overcome. Body is thinner than it needs to be, and the finish is a bit sour, doesn’t really taste right. Smells good, that’s the one positive thing about this beer.

Bottle from AlexDeLarge. Also greeted by a huge pop of the cork. So loud it scared my dogs. Hazy dark reddish purple with no real head to speak of. I get aroma of raspberries, a little tart, and a little sweet with a touch of wheat in there as well. Nice tart raspberry w a little bit of wheat in the end, but minimal. Dry tart raspberry is the most dominant aspect in this one. Huge carbonation with a nice dry finish.

Very dry cork was difficult to remove, but greeted with a satisfying pop. A dark, cloudy purple pour. Small, fading off-white head. A surprisingly appealing nose. Perfumey raspberry nose with a fair dose of sugar, but focused, rich, inviting. I do not get much outside the fruit from smelling, but I love what I get, it still feels fresh and never artificial, never syrupy. A faint wheat undertone shows up in mouth, where the raspberry intensity loses some of its juiciness. It would have kept its high scoring potential for me if the finish was not so abruptly short. Without being particularly dry, the taste just cuts down immediately after swallowing. A great fruit beer is a rare thing. This one is very close to me.

Draft in Pheonixville. pours a clean deep ruby body with a foamy pink head and some little red floaties. The aroma is sweet and tart rasberries and sugar. Flavor starts with a weird asstringancy that goes away after a while followed by a sweet rasberry flavor and some alcohol flavor in the finish.