Whitstable Raspberry Wheat

Brewed by Whitstable
Style: Belgian White (Witbier)
Maidstone, England

Orange/amber colour with a small white head. Aroma has plenty of raspberries with some summergarden flowers and a little bread. Flavour has wheat, British yeast, and raspberries with a tart edge. Obvious summer quencher and a girly favourite.

Cask ½ pint, Somerset CAMRA festival at Minehead. Pours cloudy raspberry red with pure white head. Pleasantly tart raspberry aroma. Goes down smoothly, almost like raspberry lemonade. Very good if you like fruit beer.

Cask conditioned at Harbury Beer Fest ’08. A pastiche of colour (thank you Andi) white head. Whoa, I’m not a great lover of fruit beers and this one is way over the top. Sweet, sticky Raspberry, heavy and not sharp enough. I wasn’t keen, but thats just me.

330ml bottle from Waitrose, Hythe. Cloudy amber with a pink tint, and a thick white head; raspberry aroma; slightly sour raspberry flavour; dry finish. Boring.

I am a big fan of the Whitstable beers; this is an exception. It tasted a bit like a kriek, I believe, which I don’t like. A horrible sweet and sour taste, which totally takes away from the taste of the beer.

Bottle at the East Quay Restaurant, Whitstable. Says on the back label it’s deep red, but in reality it’s more a cloudy pink hue. QUite spritsy in the mouthfeel, but I strugggled to find the raspberries, getting more lemon instead. However, it did have a nice sour/tartness to it, and probably would go well with a nice salad on a summers day, rather than a freezing cold winter’s day as the north wind blew in across Whitsable beach. Unusual and quite interesting.

Light red coloured beer with orange/amber shine; slightly pinkish tinted white head, small, fed by lively carbonation. Chalk, faint fruit jelly, lemony or faint lemonade, faint wheat, rainwater. Wheaty, wry without being really sour. Faint fruity, probably red fruit but nowhere specific raspberry. Undeniably refreshing, as in opposition to other marked qualities. Very carbonated. Classical example of a commercial description bordering on sheer fiction: for "bursting with", read: meek as a lamb; for "sharp finish", read:overcarbonated; for "no excuses for quality", please add: in comparison to Belle-Vue Framboise.

Bottle from Utobeer. Cloudy red with fluffy white head. It’s raspberry beer alright. Smells of it, tastes of it. Not exactly complex. Soft and refreshing - more sour than tart. Dry hoppy finish. An easier drink compared to the Belgian Framboises. Good choice for your Mom.