Fruit Bat Raspberry
Hell's Basement

 

355ml can - yup, this is indeed turning into the week of raspberry beers! Some Alberta brewer needs to create a series of fruit beers called 'Fruit Fly', just sayin'.

This beer pours a hazy, medium salmon amber colour, with three fingers of puffy, finely foamy, and somewhat fizzy off-white head, which leaves some skinny snow rime lace around the glass as it evenly subsides.

It smells of fresh raspberry puree, grainy and bready cereal malt, a hint of earthy yeastiness, and some plain leafy, weedy, and piney green hop bitters. The taste is gritty and grainy caramel malt, kind of underripe-seeming raspberries, and more understated earthy, musty, and floral verdant hoppiness.

The carbonation is adequate in its palate-placating frothiness, the body a decent middleweight, and mostly smooth, with nothing really getting in the way of a swell time here. It finishes off-dry, the raspberry essences huffing and puffing to the very last drop.

Overall - this comes across as a simple, sessionable base ale, all gussied up with some sassy raspberry fruitiness. Crisp, easy to throw back, and yes, a very suitable patio quaff - once that foot-deep snow mass which is currently covering mine eventually melts, that is.