Raspberry Sour (Harbour Brewing Company) By @SpectreUK

I'm often feeling a little lazy when I write a beer review. It's on these lazy occasions that I pick a beer from my cavernous beer fridge that has more of an explanation on the label. A label can often talk about the background of the beer, the brewery, the different malts and hops used in the brewing and any extra twists. Sometimes I find a beer that's worked it's way somehow to the front of the fridge that doesn't particularly have much information on the label at all. This Raspberry Sour is one of those beers. It only really tells me that raspberries were used in the brewing. It doesn't really say much else asides that it's 4.8% volume and that it's been produced by the Harbour Brewing Company in Bodmin, in North Cornwall. So I figured I may still be lazy and just open the 330ml bottle and see what it tastes like…

I remember in the past the sour beers I have had were pretty sour. Sour beers are intentionally acidic, with a tart sour flavour to make your toes curl as you drink them. On opening this Raspberry Sour it certainly had the "Wow!" factor of sour aromas. The beer was very acidic in smell to start with and then there were plenty of raspberries with their flick-knives out at the back of the aroma. This beer also has Lactobacillus in the ingredients beerandbrewing.com tells me that "Lactobacillus is one of the most common and most feared beer spoilage microorganisms. It belongs to the group of lactic acid bacteria." It's often used in yoghurts.

On pouring this deep red coloured wheat and malted barley beer, the colour reminded me of some horror movie I'd seen in the past at some point or other. I was beginning to wish I'd tried this beer around Halloween time. This Raspberry Sour beer is indeed face twistingly toe curlingly sour. There is almost a wheat and hint of sweet malted barley to start with which gets quickly overshadowed by the sourness from the raspberries and the extra special kick from the Lactobacillus. Wow, if you want an afternoon kick up the bum of a waker-upper brew than this is for you. Just don't drink it late at night, you may stay awake from the super sour flavour or at least have sour dreams of red beer that goes bump in the night!