Alaskan Brewing Co.
Juneau, AK
Available: AK, AZ, CA, CO, ID, MT, NV, OR, WA, WY
With nearly one pound of real fresh-picked raspberries (no extract) per gallon added during fermentation. This new wheat beer launched Alaskan’s Pilot Series of limited-edition specialty beers
ABV: 6.5
ABW: 5.2
Color: 16
Bitterness: 20
Original gravity: 1060
The label’s “with added raspberries” makes a point, and the rosy tint and fruity nose hammers it home: this one’s giving you the razz! Unlike many other raspberry beers, it’s not sweetened up; the tart edge of the berries remains, and there’s a trenchant bitterness that kicks in as the berry leaves your palate post-swallow. The fruit feels real; the bitterness is a personal issue. For me, it brings the glass back to my lips long after I intended to be done with this tasting.
If someone handed me a glass of this beer blind, I’d say, “Hmmm, raspberry.” It looks like a beer with raspberries (or other red fruit) in it; it smells a lot like a handful of fresh raspberries with some stems still attached; and it tastes―surprise!―like raspberries. But it’s not sweet and neither is it cloying, instead presenting a light fruitiness on the front, a balanced mix of raspberry sweetness and tartness in the body, mellowed by a dry wheaty flavor and light citrus notes, and finishing quite dry and a little bitter. Not at all a dessert beer, but rather a sitting-around-in-the-afternoon-chewing-the-fat beer, and a very fine one, at that!
Lew Bryson writes about beer and whiskey from his home in southeast Pennsylvania. He has a family and two dogs. That's all you need to know.
Once described as “beerdom's Brillat-Savarin,” Stephen Beaumont is the author of five books and countless articles on beer, spirits, food, travel, and how it all goes together.
