Flim fram...

I've been in the middle of a post about 'balance' for some time now, four or five weeks at least... I clearly can't write properly in Summer, or some other such excuse... Perhaps 'balance' is too poncey a subject, we'll see...

Good, now I've got that out of my system I'm going to talk about raspberry beer or rather framboise or even frambozen if you fancy.

I don't drink a great deal of fruit beer but I certainly appreciate a good one. For me a good one has to be lambic, a beer made with wild yeast. The wild yeasts in lambic beer create a multitude of sour flavours - perfect to balance fruit. Some use just this type of brewing some a portion of lambic added to a more robust ale. Get in to lambic - it's ace...

I was dismayed when duvel moortgat decided to kill off Liefmans Frambozen. This beer was a thing to behold, a Flemish brown ale laced heavily with raspberry and for me one of the truest expressions of fruit beer. Sweet and perfumed with the fruit and the complex sour maltiness befitting the king of Flemish brown ales. Unfortunately the big boys didn't see it that way and tossed the little pink beverage into the canal... Beautiful packaging and all.

This left somewhat of a void in the world of raspberry beers. The better known Timmermans falls at the first hurdle by 'virtue' of being utter rubbish. Bacchus stepped in and made a perfecty good brown ale based Framboise that North still sells on draught. There's also a very good one from lambic superstars; Lindemans but it's two and a half percent alcohol so really it's a fizzy drink. Incidentally it's a good beer for anyone who's lost faith in rehab or indeed has only just fallen off the wagon - we have a good offer on at North, I won't tell...

The other I know well is Girardin, this is a famous lambic house that makes spectacular, balanced gueuze - blended young and aged lambic. The Girardin framboise is light, bracingly sour and almost champagne like in its sherbet fizziness, this is truly a beer to rival the frambozen BUT it's not got everything I want, it's amazing but not so balanced and not as good as what I'm drinking now...

A while back I met a lovely chap called Alan Kovan, it was actually about a year ago during our US beer festival. I took him on a boozy tour of north's finest tipples and, bless him, he gave me a bottle of unbelieveably brilliant Belgian red from New Glarus in Wisconsin. It was a cherry beer of true distinction and considerable rarity. I've only ever seen empty bottles since as it cannot be exported from Wisconsin. The empty bottles are usually on the shelves of the type of people who speak about beers like this in slightly hushed tones if you catch my drift...

Cut to the chase - my good, old friend Mr Simon mentioned a few weeks back that he was on his way over to that part of the world. I duly lashed him to his chair and made him promise to bring back New Glarus beer... Thanks Si!

I'm drinking some Raspberry Tart right now... It's delicious, the smell of the damn thing hits you before you take a sip and is so bleedingly perfumed and bright that it actually makes you stop before take a sup. The beer is a raspberry shotgun full of sherbert and sorbet and bang! It lasts forever on your palette and has a brilliant almost salty bite... Yes Salty!

If you are ever in a situation where you can get hold of anything from this brewery... You bring me some back... Fucker...

New Glarus

Lindemans

Girardin