Name – Aphrodite
Country – United States
Type – Fruit Beer

It can be quite a treat finding a beer on the shelves that you’ve never seen, or even heard of, before.  This happened a few days ago with Ommegang Aphrodite.  I didn’t recall reading about this one coming out in the beer news.  No one locally told me anything about it so I was a bit taken back.

The bottles said it is fermented with brettanomyces, raspberries and pear.  Sounded interesting enough to me so I had to grab a bottle.

So I popped the cork and poured it into my Funky Buddha snifter.  It pours out a ruby red color with a big pink colored head.  I’ve seen a few beers with this color head before but it always looks cool every time.

The nose right away had raspberries in it.  There was a slight yeasty funk to it but I say the raspberries power through the most.

In the taste you are immediately hit with a nice tart raspberry taste.  The brett can be picked up for sure with some funky notes in there to boot.  It finishes dry and crisp with little to no sign of the 8.9% ABV in there.  Dangerous!

This beer drinks so well.  And not just as a sour fan but I believe you could get a few people that have never tried sours hooked on this.  The tartness is not overboard and extremely approachable.

I wish Ommegang made more sours.  I’ve liked everyone I have tried from this to Zuur all the way back to Rouge.  They seem to know what they are doing with them but don’t do them all that often.  Just great stuff.

So if you are a sour fan I think you should try this.  If you are new to sours and want to try one you should try this.  You might end up hooked on the pucker of sour ales like me.

Apologies for the image quality. Damn iPhone.

Grade – A-