Rickshaw Raspberry IPA
Tree Brewing Co.

 

 

 

 

 

650ml bottle. Did they really ever use rickshaws to transport harvested fruit in the Okanagan orchards of yore? Is there a sizable Chinese work force, now and then, in the province of British Columbia? Discuss.

This beer pours a slightly hazy, pale orange salmon hue, with three pudgy fingers of puffy, loosely foamy, and rather bubbly pink-tinged off-white head, which leaves some wafting sudsy cloud lace around the glass as things work their way south.

It smells of acrid pine needles, a musty forest floor leafiness, a strangely evolving tart raspberry fruitiness which seems at odds with the hovering orange and white grapefruit bitterness, a crackery, bready pale and caramel malt, and an astringent grainy woodiness. The taste is dried green raspberries, a surely promoted gritty wood plank character, edgy pine needles, blended citrus rind, more biscuity and crackery pale malt, reduced bready caramel, and a further indistinct earthy mustiness.

The bubbles are a bit tacky, but supportive enough otherwise, the body a so-so medium weight, and not particularly smooth, that piney, woody, and perhaps fruity acridity salting the proverbial earth here. It finishes on the dry side, for the same reasons just elucidated.

Definitely more of an IPA, with a neat twist on the malt bill, than anything resembling a fruit beer, as the raspberry guest star is quickly sublimated into the fruity hop morass of the take no prisoners west coast style. In the end, tasty and quite drinkable, with a fresh and crisp bearing, all this said with a touch of whimsical self-doubt.