Wednesday, September 15, 2010

Dark Horse Raspberry Ale

Had a Dark Horse Raspberry Ale today.
The beer was a mild brown color and poured with a small amount of head that dissipated quickly.  It's kind of funny having this raspberry ale after the Great Divide one.  The Great Divide had a huge raspberry smell with a tiny raspberry taste while this one had a faint raspberry smell but tasted strongly of raspberries.  In the end, I prefer the Dark Horse because the beer was more flavorful than the Great Divide.  The raspberry flavor tasted very natural, blended with the beer really well, and all the flavors were very complimentary.  For people who don't like bitter beers, this would be perfect as there wasn't a trace of hop flavor in it, just sweet malts.  Very good beer.

3 comments:

  1. How seasonal do you find these types of beers to be, Rich? I mean, raspberries aren't always in season. Do they use them when they are and then it takes a certain number of months for the beers to be ready? Will these only be around for a certain amount of time?

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  2. Also, any comment on the labels? The labels for these specialty beers seem to be ridiculously ornate. Do they hire artists? Why do they all go to so much trouble? It's hard to even read the names sometimes.

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  3. For your first post, most places use raspberry extract so it's not necessarily a seasonal beer just because it's made with raspberries. The difficulty is it's impossible to know if something is seasonal most of the time since it's no usually written on the bottle.

    As for the labels, I think it's funny you think this label is ornate. The Dark Horse labels are always so terrible. That's the only reason it's hard to read. Otherwise, it totally depends on the brewery. Some hire artists, some have their friends do it, just depends. And I like a good label so I think they go to all the trouble so it looks good on a shelf.

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