White Rabbit Lemon Raz Radler
Russell Brewing Company

473ml can - as usual, Western Canadian beer reps can't seem to comprehend the idea of seasonality.

This beer pours a mostly clear, pale golden straw colour, with four fingers of puffy, finely foamy, and somewhat creamy bone-white head, which leaves some layered streaky cirrus cloud form lace around the glass as it quickly sinks away.

It smells of raspberry cream pie, acrid lemon juice, gritty and grainy wheat malt, a lesser breakfast cereal sweetness, a hint of estery yeast, and some very subtle earthy, leafy, and floral green hop bitters. The taste is sugary raspberry and lemon puree, bready and doughy caramel malt, wet wheat crackers, further candi syrup notes, and more well understated earthy, weedy, and musty 'verdant' hoppiness.

The carbonation is quite tame in its quotidian frothiness, the body a decent medium weight, and generally smooth, as the saccharine aspect kind of trumps any fruity acerbity, as such. It finishes on the sweet side, natch, all fruit and overwrought malt.

In summary, this has to be the fullest-tasting Radler that I have ever encountered - if I wasn't otherwise informed, I would have pegged this as a simple fruit beer. Nothing all that balanced, of course, but still nice and flavourful, even if the patios around here have been long shuttered for 2017.