St. Ambroise Framboise

Brewed by McAuslan Brewing
Style: Fruit Beer
Montreal, Canada

Five bucks for this bottle, and all you get for this money is a muddled blend of raspberry syrup and bland, vague malts. Didn’t notice the "sun-ripened hops", which makes sense because hops don’t ripen and all hops are grown outside anyway. Whether they are merely trotting out their old raspberry beer in a pretentious package or not I don’t know, but charging real money for this blend of bland is criminal. They better not do this with my oatmeal stout!

Any first impressions?
-Prosperous whipped cream of a head sits atop the pinkish regal red, drawing tons of lacing.
-Faint raspberries pierce the sturdy foam.
-The mild balance of raspberry sweetness and tartness whispers simple refreshment.
-The expansive carbonation provides a frothy, festive mouthfeel, increasing drinkability.

What if you dig deeper?
-Some bittering hop resins nicely dry out the back of the palate.
-Wooden hops shyly accompany the meek raspberries in the nose.
-The overall flavor spectrum is too restrictive and shy for flavor-seeking tastebuds.
-All in all, this is a well-crafted, boring recipe.

Bottle; no date.

Hazy dark reddish to purple ale, with an extra thick lacing pinkish head. Fresh raspberry aroma, with seeds, very pleasant. In mouth, a dry crisp malt with puckering fruits, rather refreshing, and not artificial, but this puppy loses points for being way too expansive! 5.39% a bottle, come on! I was expecting freaking Boon Framboise here.

Sampled draught at the Mondial de la Bière in Montreal, 2006. Dark purple-red in color, with little retained head and no lacing....nicely balanced sweet-sharp fruity nose, hints of biscuit, but very simple if not pedestrian overall....the body is tart and sour predominantly, rather thin and lacking in a real malt background but for a touch of dry cookie dough....becomes pretty jammy and syrupy towards the finish, and a nasty metallic edginess intrudes on the otherwise tolerable finish, becoming really harsh as the sample warms to cellar temp....I had trouble finishing this, what a bummer from this fine brewery.

Strong, jammy, raspberry aroma with some grain character notable but a mildly soapy note is distracting. Clear, amber brown coloured body is topped by a decent, fine bubbled, pink tinged white head that lasts nicely. Toasted malts are balanced nicely with lightly tart raspberries in the flavour with a lingering sweetness in the aftertaste. Medium body with moderate, fine bubbled carbonation that invigorates the tastebuds. Mondial 2006.

Sampled at Mondial 2006. Dark red body with a pink head. The aroma was definitely sour raspberries with tart candy smells. There was some fresh hay. The taste is a little tart with raspberries and some hay. A nice mild beer tat is dry and refreshing. Nothing close to a lambic, but somewhere in between that and the typical fruit beer.

Bottle (2x341ml). Shared with blankboy, GregClow, jerc, mds and tupalev, bottles from blankboy and tupalev. Deep clear ruby with a decent sized pink foamy head. I found the aroma a little light, slightly tart berryfruit, a hint of table cream, some sharp yeast character on warming, even more "real" raspberry (almost 8/10). The fruit character in the taste was a little less differentiated - I wrote "redfruit" - sticky sweet fruit with building pepper yeast sharpness building to a dry, oddly bitter finish. Decent body, sticky and dry, lightly syrupy mouthfeel - this smells really pleasing, but I can’t help but think it’s a bit of a miss - I’d like it to have either more sourness or less dry bitterness. But I liked it well enough...

A fruity aroma in a mildly purple colour, nice soapy head, fresh from Montreal. A blond like characteristic, injected with the raspberry puree, not quite natural berries added right in but also not too synthetic. Nicve summer beverage.