Ingenious: Smarty Champagne Sherbet (USA: Berliner Weisse: 6.8% ABV)
Visual: Strawberry juice red. No real head, just a handful of bubbles. Some small bubbled carbonation.
Nose: Strawberry jelly babies. Crushed love hearts. Palma violets. Fudge. Seville orange.
Body: Light sherbety mouthfeel and sherbet lemon. Fudge to chocolate fudge. Grapes. Strawberry. Raspberry soft drinks. Crushed love hearts. Sweet white wine. Grape juice. Orange jelly sweets.
Finish: Chocolate fudge. Chocolate orange. Sweet raspberry. Lemon sorbet. Green grapes. Slight funky feel. Palma violets. Red grape juice.
Conclusion: This is nothing like what I expected. Which is partially my fault, with something called Champagne Sherbet I should not be surprised when it has lemon sherbet flavours.
My bad.
What is unexpected is how restrained the Berliner sharpness is. There is a soft, tart, fizzy character but nothing like the acidic pain from my first Berliner Weisse experience. It may help that I don’t have an unknown tooth cavity this time.
Again, my bad.
It is fruity, with the expected strawberry and raspberry notes coming through quasi naturally, but what really sticks out in this is that it feels like some one took a ton of crushed love hearts and dumped them into the beer.
But in a good way.
It results in an odd mix of natural fruit and super artificial sherbet fizz. Then you back it with soft white wine like notes and a bit of yeast funk at the end and you have something that should not at all mesh together, but somehow does.
It has a champagne feel only in the funk in the finish, and the fruit used comes across cleanest in the aroma; In-between the two there is a massive mix of everything that went into this. So, yeah somehow they manage to make drinking crushed sweets through fruit stewed in white wine work. Which is impressive.
It is fun, but unlike a lot of “fun” beers it feels well brewed and almost could even be called balanced. Almost. Lets face it, something that tastes like crushed sweets will never be 100% balanced.
Fun, funky. Fruity and sweet. I need a word that means sweet but begins with f to continue the alliterations. Fructose? Nah that is rubbish. Anyway, if this was a lower abv this would be a perfect drinking in the sun refresher. As is I enjoyed the hell out of it anyway.
Background: Ok this is a (Deep breath) Berliner brewed with champagne yeast and conditioned on raspberry, strawberry, orange, lime and vanilla. Which is a bit of a mouthful. At time of doing the notes initially I was only aware of the strawberry and raspberry, so I am happy I picked up on some of the others as well. This is listed everywhere as “Smarty Champagne Sherbet” but on the can I could initially only see “Champagne Sherbet” and that is from an additional label stuck on it. Anyway, yeah I see it NOW! Go figure. Additionally the label, and most of the internet calls this at 6.8% abv, but if you peel off the label the can calls it as 6.1% ABV. Again, go figure. No canned on date for this one, so not sure how long it has been since it was brewed. As you may have guessed from that, this is another one grabbed from The Beer Bruvs website. Went with Evan Greer’s Spotify Is Surveillance as backing music again. Easy to listen to but politically sharp. I like it.
