My initial plan for this beer was to prevent fermentation of the sugars in the fruit to get a sweet final product. It turned out that the fruit wasn't really all that sweet to begin with so the gravity wasn't really raised much once the fruit was added. I believe the added liquid more or less offset the added sugar. Based on this I opted to just let the cards fall as they may and allow the beer to ferment out.
It had a nice fruit presence after spending a couple months on the raspberries but was a little bit bland so I added 0.75 gal of lacto soured wort. This had the desired effect of giving the beer a bit more pep.
I've been drinking this beer for the last month. It's going quickly (drank about half the batch). Better get in the review now before it's all gone.
Tasting Notes:
- Aroma:
- Strong aroma of black raspberry. They're not quite like either red raspberry or black berry. Interesting fruit that I hadn't tried prior to moving out here. They smell very natural - not like a candy version of fruit at all. No malt comes through.
- Appearance:
- Purple to dark red. I usually pour in the dregs (as they improve the fruit character) so it's a little cloudy. Pours with a 1 finger head that is a nice pink color. Head doesn't last long and settles down to nothing.
- Flavor:
- Fruit flavor up front with a sour bite in the finish. There is a slight incongruity to the flavor profile where the sourness has a character that is slightly different than the natural tartness from raspberries - more of a citrus maybe. It certainly doesn't clash but I was hoping that the sourness would feel a bit more like an enhancement to the natural raspberry sourness rather than a separate sourness (not sure I'd pick this out if I didn't know there was lacto in the mix). Very slight bready malt backbone to the flavor.
- Mouthfeel:
- Medium/light bodied with a slight sweetness. Finishes with prickly sourness. The sourness lingers on the tongue for some time. Easy drinking beer that makes your mouth long for another sip.
- Overall:
- It's an interesting and really nicely flavored beer. Not sure you'd guess it had 10 lbs of fruit but it's certainly very fruity. It definitely provides the sour kick that I've grown to enjoy frequently. I was a bit disappointed to not get the amount of sweetness that I'd expected from the fruit. Also hard to disconnect the beer from the fact that I spent $40 for the right to pick and 4 hrs doing the picking in order to make it. I didn't do that this year and I'm not sure I'd do it again. The black raspberry flavor is nice but I think I may prefer the normal red raspberry to it.
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