St. Louis Premium Framboise overflows with good old-fashioned raspberry taste. Bierkasteel Van Honsebrouck, a brewery in Belgium, brews it. Their lambic style fruit beer gets its intoxicating taste from 25 percent Willamette raspberry juice. What makes it very drinkable is its low Alcohol By Volume (ABV) rate of 2.8 percent.
I encountered this bliss in a glass through a guest tap at the Florida based Daytona Beach Brewing Company last month.
At first sniff I was in love. This was the rich raspberry scent of my childhood, not the current worn out scent of supermarket shelved fruit.
As I continued to breath in the aroma of this beer the walls of the Daytona Beach Brewing Company melted away and I was transported back in time to my favorite childhood raspberry patch in Maine. The smell of the beer was the same as what would emerge from my patch on the hottest, calmest days of summer when the birds were sleeping and the bees were buzzing.
The bushes were always heavy with warm, plump, ripe red berries ready for the picking. And I would always push my way deep into the patch ignoring scratches from thorns as I searched for the one perfect berry.
It was always a raspberry that fell easily into my hand leaving a sweet red smear of fruit on my skin as I popped it into my mouth. And as the sweet elixir juice of that berry from my past trickled down my throat the walls of the Daytona Beach Brewery Company suddenly reappear and I realized I had taken my first sip of Framboise.
I was glad I bought a snifter ($6) so I could relive my childhood with each additional sip. It was mouthwateringly delicious with a crisp, tart finish just like my wild raspberries.
Unfortunately, the Daytona Beach Brewing Company no longer has that beer on tap but the Belgian company Bierkasteel Van Honsebrouck does sell it by the bottle.
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| St. Louis Premium Framboise Ale guest tap, Daytona Beach Brewing Company, Daytona Beach, Fla. Copyright 2016 by Helen A Lockey |
At first sniff I was in love. This was the rich raspberry scent of my childhood, not the current worn out scent of supermarket shelved fruit.
As I continued to breath in the aroma of this beer the walls of the Daytona Beach Brewing Company melted away and I was transported back in time to my favorite childhood raspberry patch in Maine. The smell of the beer was the same as what would emerge from my patch on the hottest, calmest days of summer when the birds were sleeping and the bees were buzzing.
The bushes were always heavy with warm, plump, ripe red berries ready for the picking. And I would always push my way deep into the patch ignoring scratches from thorns as I searched for the one perfect berry.
It was always a raspberry that fell easily into my hand leaving a sweet red smear of fruit on my skin as I popped it into my mouth. And as the sweet elixir juice of that berry from my past trickled down my throat the walls of the Daytona Beach Brewery Company suddenly reappear and I realized I had taken my first sip of Framboise.
I was glad I bought a snifter ($6) so I could relive my childhood with each additional sip. It was mouthwateringly delicious with a crisp, tart finish just like my wild raspberries.
Unfortunately, the Daytona Beach Brewing Company no longer has that beer on tap but the Belgian company Bierkasteel Van Honsebrouck does sell it by the bottle.
