Weekly Beer Geek: Raspberry Hefeweizen Unfiltered Wheat Beer

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Harpoon Brewery

$2.29/bottle

Grade: D+

Introduction:

Harper's Brewpub in East Lansing makes an excellent wheat beer, which I haven't reviewed because it is only available at the bar itself. They also offer a version with raspberry flavor, which is a delightful pink. It was also delightfully responsible for my St. Valentine's Day hangover, after a fit of holiday spirit (and being single on Valentine's AGAIN) made me drink several pitchers of it the night before. Anyway, the moral of the story is that my enjoyment of raspberry wheat beer was clashing hard with my desire to only review commercially available beer- and then I saw a UFO. UFO, in this case, stands for UnFiltered Offering, the cutesy name that Harpoon brewery gives to their unfiltered beers. One of these UFOs is Raspberry Hefeweizen, which I bring to you today.

What They Say:

Just like the bar, Harpoon creates their raspberry wheat simply by adding raspberry flavoring to their existing wheat beer. Hefeweizen, a term you may not be familiar with, is central to Harpoon's line of beers. It's from the German words for "yeast" and "wheat," which is exactly what they advertise- a wheat beer, with yeast in it. In this case, they do not filter the yeast after brewing (in contrast to brewers like Unibroue, who actually continue the fermentation in the bottle), which makes the beer cloudy and supposedly makes the mouth feel smoother. Harpoon claims this beer tastes fruity and lightly sweet without being overwhelming, and finishes tart and dry.

What I Say:

When I opened the bottle I was greeted, not by the "scent of fresh raspberries" promised by the website, but by the smell of fruit snacks. Not promising. The beer is certainly cloudy, as expected, and is a lovely golden color, although it looked rather thin. My problem is the taste. More specifically, the lack thereof. My first mouthful tasted watery and thin, and it didn't get any better from there. There is very little beer taste to UFO Raspberry, only a very thin faint bitter bite after the swallow. The raspberry flavor is likewise muted- it almost tastes like someone rinsed out a beer bottle and a fruit juice bottle and mixed the rinse water- bland and boring, with barely-there taste. The one good thing I can say for this beer, is that it is very smooth and goes down well. It makes me want to try more unfiltered beer, to find one that lives up to its potential.

Drink This Beer:

First thing- drink it right, it's unfiltered. If you just drink it, settled yeast clumps will hit your lips- so either roll the bottle to dissolve them or use a glass. As unimpressive as this beer is, it still has its merits. If you're curious about the taste of an unfiltered beer, this is a relatively mild one. It might help you decide if you like the smoother texture and can live with the cloudiness and bottle-residue, without the added factor of a very strong brew. That's about it, really.

Bottom Line:

Harpoon's web site has a whole section on the "Unfiltered lifestyle," because they think drinking unfiltered beer makes you a super-cool hipster iconoclast who doesn't blend in to the crowd. Let me speak for us all- if you consider "unfiltered beer" to be a lifestyle, I want to punch you right in the face.

 

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