Pink Drink
Hopworks Brewery

 

I had this beer on-tap in a snifter at Hopvine Pub in Seattle.

Appearance: orange gold hue with a bit of haze and light effervescence. There's a nice lace left on the glass; I like it.

Smell: sweet rich raspberries with a little maltiness underneath. There's a bit of alcohol bite here as well.

Taste: good raspberries with a subtle but classic tripel underneath. I like it.

Mouthfeel: medium body with a good carbonation and wonderful creaminess. Bam!

Overall a very good beer if you like fruited tripels. It's a hard synergy to get right, and HUB have done it here.

 

10oz chalice at the Underground's HUB tap takeover. This is a raspberry-infused Tripel, according to the script on the beer menu.

This beer appears a clear, pale pink tinged amber colour, with a thin cap of wispy, and weakly bubbly eggshell white head, which leaves some decent melting iceberg lace around the glass as it lazily recedes.

It smells of semi-sweet raspberries, grainy pale malt, a hint of phenolic yeast, leafy, earthy hops, and a suggestion of cold, steely alcohol. The taste is more veritable creamed raspberries up front, though now restricted by a growing acrid yeastiness, a sturdy pale grainy malt, steady noble-aspirant hops, and a pleasantly innocuous alcohol quotient.

The carbonation is surely present, but not at all obtrusive in its cheeky frothiness, the body a decent middleweight for the style, and equitably smooth, the alcohol and hops providing a pass here, it would seem. It finishes on the dry side, surprisingly, as those perky raspberries reassert themselves.

A well rendered, and crazily drinkable re-imagining of the Tripel style. The fruit (raspberries, natch) do the trick, as only they seem perfectly capable of in this respect.