Herevana – Craftwork – La Framboise
Quick change of pace and style again. I like the beers from Craftwork. All of them. They’re not oft made styles of beer, and they’re very good at doing them.
Then again I like all the styles of beer, more or less. The lambics and traditional Sours though, get in!
Craftwork make the Craftwork La Framboise in Oamaru, Otago, 🇳🇿 New Zealand and this one is in a Lambic – Flavored style of 6.0% ABV. This 500ml bottle would be 2.4 standard drinks in NZ.
One of the things is that this one comes with a temperature rage recommendation, and again I have no idea what that’s like, how to measure it, in the bottle or the glass, and I sure can’t afford a temperature controlled fridge to do it for me. Newcastle Brown comes with a ‘temperature Star that changes colour so you know when it’s at the best temperature to drink it (thanks Vish for that, I mean who knows that kind of thing?) It a thermochromatic label, something I think that we might eventually get to in NZ. It’d go a long way for the brewers to get their beer in optium range for me to enjoy it.
Anyway, straight from the fridge, warming only as I do the research and background on things, bit of cut and paste, find some music, get the Chrome Audio to connect, check the cheese situation, all those things.
All I can say about that aroma is wow. For me that’s authentic.
I was taken aback that this is raspberry coloured, proving I don’t read the notes, bit it’s properly raspberry colour like when the kids have a raspberry and lemonade colour. Lively in the bottle I had to pour it to prevent a minor escape.
Bravely and foolhardy I tries to go a head. I’ve stopped laughing now. It sits in the glass still and unmoving, almost flat. It isn’t flat as there are carbonation bubbles aplenty when you look harder. The aroma is very high and pleasing wafting over the table towards me, beckoning.
There’s much going on. This is pucker up and squint tart. There’s a really earthy pithy dryness from the raspberry. I didn’t get caught out second sip but was then enjoying a lovely sweet middle bit when that sour/tartness came back at the end with a jab.
There’s a lot os lip smacking going on, there’s no shortage of raspberry taste and flavour in this. It also has that lovely lambic tartness too, they’ve taken a good and made it even gooderer.
The Pdubyah-o-meter rates this as 8 on the arbitrary number scale. There’s nothing quite like a Lambic beer, and they all have similar base notes, it’s where they go after that. This is immense, those raspberries are really pulling their weight and leading the fight from the front. it’s jolly good.
Music: Chvrches with an album called Screen Violence. There’s a lot of familiar about this and some not so much.
Raspberry wild ale. Local fruit aged for 6 months on one year old spontaneous coolship beer, the re-fermented in the bottle. Silver medal, AIBA, 2018
Brewers Notes
Herevana beers are those I drink at home, I’m not at some beer festival, like, for instance, Beervana, but am just in my kitchen, usually, dining room table, sometimes, or outside, occasionally, where I can take an average picture and write in real time about the beer that I’ve invested in, both in a monetary and emotional way.
Philip himself.
Lambic – Flavored
The Flavored Lambic is a complex, often fruity, pleasantly sour, wild partially-wheat ale fermented by a variety of microorganisms, and showcasing contributions of flowers, fruits, or spirit barrels typically, and blended with the wild character of a spontaneously-fermented Belgian traditional ale. The type of flavoring can sometimes be hard to identify as fermentation and aging characteristics can seem different from the more recognizable flavors of unaltered additions. A variety of fruit or other addition may determine the color. Fruit-based Flavored Lambics are often produced like gueuze by mixing one, two, and three-year old lambic. Young lambic contains fermentable sugars while old lambic has the characteristic wild taste of the Senne River valley. The fruit or other additions are commonly added halfway through aging and the yeast and bacteria will ferment all sugars from the fruit but the fruit may also be added to unblended lambic. The most traditional styles of fruit lambics include cherry (kriek), raspberry (frambozen) and muscat grapes (druivenlambik). A lambic with fruit isn’t just a fruit beer, the wild lambic character must be evident.
A life just as ordinary 