Raspberried At Sea
Pelican Brewing Company

I am going to sound like a total looney, which many already think of me as being anyway, so fair dinkum. My meanderings have steered me away from what I was planning to drink next & back into the realm of the Bottle (!) Backlog! I got sidetracked with those Odd Side CANs, especially the Mango Peach Dank Juice.

From the Bottle (!): "Born at the beach"; "Lone Pelican Small Batch Series"; "Pelican Brewing since 1996 Oregon Coast, USA"; "Raspberried At Sea Ale with Raspberries"; "25 IBU"; "Some of the most delicious and plentiful berries from the Pacific Nothwest are red raspberries. Imagining the perfect beer to highlight this glorious fruit led to a lighter touch with malt and hops, letting the raspberries shine through. Raspberried at Sea starts with a base beer inspired by the Tripels of Belguim, then layers on color and flavor with immense amounts of raspberries and carefully selected Abbey-type ale yeast. With a light color topped by pink-hued foam, and an aroma and flavor that layers bright raspberry flavor with Abbey yeast and light malt flavor, Raspberried at Sea brings to mind a sparkling rosé."; "Pink-Hued Foam * Tart Raspberry Character * Layers of Fruity Complexity * Bright, Refreshing Finish"; "Lone Pelican Series - Like the lone pelican flying independently from the flock, this small batch series flies in the face of convention. Our Lone Pelican Series takes traditional beer styles and ingredients and reimagines them to demonstrate the vast spectrum of flavor experiences in this wonderful beverage."; "Cheers Fellow Fanatics!"

My visit to the PeliCAN Brewery in 2007 was probably one of the best EVAR! They have a magnificent view of the Pacific Ocean with Haystack Rock on the horizon with an abundance of surfers & sunset is NOT to be missed. HIGHLY recommended!

I started by Pop!ping the cap on this bomber, followed by an extremely slow, gentle C-Line pour, given all of the visible lees on the punt/kick. I was rewarded with/by the formation of two-plus fingers of dense, foamy, rocky, pinkish-white (!) head that resembled freshly-spun cotton candy & evinced decent retention. Color was a lightly-hazy Carmine-Maroon (!) (SRM = N/A). Unlike Berried At Sea, I identified raspberries on the nose immediately upon lifting the glass for a sniff!

My late-paternal grandmother used to have an immaculately maintained wee, tiny backyard with beautiful roses on one side & a red raspberry bush on the other. To lay in the green, velvety grass carpet & read comic books while bees buzzed busily overhead was bliss in the Summer.

This beer was unquestionably of raspberries & deserved its identification as a Fruit & Field Beer, no question. Mmm. Mouthfeel was medium. Taste was full-on red raspberry with its attendant sweet-tartness! Mmm.

Those raspberries of Grummy ChANdler's never went to waste, either. We would eat them in the yard & gather some for raspberry shortcake with cream, raspberry tarts, raspberry pies & towards the end of the growing season, raspberry preserves! She was a great cook & she was who taught me to bake all manner of doughy stuff in the oven. My maternal Grummy was more of a stovetop person, save for roasting. They were both excellent cooks, though & inspired me to take all four (4) semesters of HomeEc (Foods) in high school!

I always enjoy being inspired by a beer to these flights of reverie. It just goes to show how evocative of the fruit adjunct a fruit beer can actually be. If the idea is "... providing obvious yet harmonious fruit qualities", then this certainly qualifies! Nothing jangly or unharmonious here.

Taster at Tap n Fill. Light violet pour, small foamy head. Fruity, jelly jar aroma. Taste is more of the berries, sweet, light tartness. Nice weight to this as well.