One of the best parts of South Sound summer is when locally picked raspberries start arriving at the farmers’ markets. Pick up a pound and you’ll ask yourself how the hell you spend 10 months of the year eating strangely flavorless raspberries trucked up from California. There are more than 20 varieties of red raspberries, including several that originate here in the Northwest. They also come in black, purple and even golden varieties. One cup of raspberries will supply more than half your daily requirement of vitamin C, along with a heart-helping, fat-busting, cancer-fighting abundance of antioxidants. Get yourself primed for the most wonderful time of the year for fruit lovers with Peaks and Pints’ Craft Beer Crosscut: 6.9.17: A Flight of Raspberry. Say what you might about raspberry beer, but the oft-maligned style has caught on in so many ways that we just couldn’t ignore it. With the weather heating up, “crushability” becomes an important factor when scanning Peaks and Pints’ cooler for the perfect summertime brew. Consider raspberry.
Epic Lil’ Brainless Raspberries
5.2% ABV, 7 IBU
Epic Brewing’s Lil’ Brainless on Raspberries is a lighter, more sessionable cousin to the brewery’s well-known, bigger Belgian-style Brainless on Raspberries. Brewed with raspberry puree, Lil’ Brainless has a lovely raspberry perfume with a bit of coriander lingering in the back. The taste starts with subtle raspberry flavors that are tart with some dry and puckering tannin notes. Next comes the malt with a bit of that phenolic spiciness from the yeast. Some floral bitterness from the hops lingers on the back of the tongue towards the end, with a finish that is semi-tart and dry.
Wingman Razma Attack
7% ABV
Razma Attack is Wingman Brewers’ Berliner weisse recipe brewed with a copious amount of raspberries. That finished beer is then blended with the Tacoma brewery’s house mixed culture Saison to provide a more complex Brett and Pedio backbone. Make no mistake this isn’t some commercial-grade raspberry wheat ale that tastes like it was made with the leftover topping from a frozen supermarket cheesecake. This is a quality, dark red Berliner weisse that has been enhanced with tart, slightly sweet raspberry flavor with perfect carbonation.
Abita Purple Haze
4.2% ABV, 13 IBU
Located 30 miles north of New Orleans, Abita Brewing fired up the mash tun in 1986, making it the oldest craft brewery in the southeastern United States. Abita’s Purple Haze is an American wheat ale with fresh raspberries added during secondary fermentation. The result pours a hazy beige with just the faintest hint of lavender. It’s a lively combination of soft wheat and sweet raspberry on the nose. Smooth and creamy, it offers bright raspberry flavors up front, backed by grain-laced malt and just the right hint of hops. ’Scuse us while we kiss the sky!
Founders Rubaeus
5.7% ABV, 15 IBU
Founders Rubaeus has major raspberry going on. This stunning berry red beer bursts with fresh raspberries, which are added multiple times during the brewing process to get the most raspberry bang for your buck. The color, smell, and taste of raspberries reflect the fruit’s addition throughout fermentation. Biscuity malt supports the sweet berry flavor; when combined with spritely carbonation, this ale tastes almost soda-like. Slight tartness serves as a reminder that this is, in fact, an alcoholic beverage, and the perfect one to experiment with beer-based sangria.
Elevation Raspberry Gulch Imperial Saison
8.12% ABV, 25 IBU
Part of Elevation Brewing‘s Black Series, and names after a trail close to Poncha Springs, where Elevation is located, Raspberry Gulch Imperial Saison packs more of a punch than a typical saison, thanks to its 8.25 percent ABV, a traditional yeast strain from Belgium and nearly 18 pounds of raspberries per barrel. This is not the beer to drink if you’re looking for a beer that balances fruit and beer flavors — this one goes all-in on raspberries and pushes the other saison flavors out of the hand. It’s sweet for a saison.
