Foeder-Fermented Grisette - Blackberry
Bellwoods Brewery

Leading an outing of The Responsible Beer Drinking Club; canned and chilled, 4oz. in a flight glass. My 47th beer from the Toronto, Ontario brewery, and 21st for 2026....

473 mL can from the brewery; dated Dec XX 2025 (I can't make out the day) and served slightly chilled.

Pours a murky purplish-red colour; holding the glass to a bright light reveals a brilliant magenta hue, in addition to this brew's translucency. Roughly one inch of frothy, lilac-tinged collapses within a couple of minutes, reduced to a thin, sudsy collar around a patch of film on the surface. A spackling pattern of lace is produced after the first several sips - it's a great-looking beer, I've got to give it that. There's some leathery, funky Brett notes on the nose, smashed together with blackberry yogurt, oak and wheat.

It's tasty, with real blackberry flavour lasting throughout the sip. Underneath, I'm also getting notes of oak, vanilla, wheat, leather and blackberry seeds; very mild Brett presence with nominal funkiness and only a slight tartness. Finishes with blackberry & grain sweetness fading into the aftertaste, which trends dry-ish. Light in body, but with decent weight for only 3.8%; moderate carbonation with a smooth, slightly juicy mouthfeel. Highly sessionable.

Final Grade: 3.94, a B+. Blackberry Grisette is a fine light ale, but (as noted when I reviewed the raspberry variant) the fruit addition makes the nuances of the underlying grisette more difficult to discern. Does that make this 'worse' than their original Grisette? I don't really think so - grisettes are mainly known for being light and nominally refreshing, so that slight drop in complexity is not as much of a problem for me as it might be in the case of a stronger farmhouse ale. I prefer this over the raspberry variant, but outdoors on a hot patio in the summer, any one of Bellwoods' grisettes would suit me just fine.