Southern Tier is a brewery in Lakewood, New York, not far from Lake Erie. I've had a good number of their beers such as their Creme Brulee Stout and Jahva Stout, both as interesting and bold-flavored as they sound. As I've said before, I am a sucker for oak-aged beers so I even tried their Oak Aged Unearthly Imperial IPA, a really strange blend of flavors, which I don't recommend. I should have remembered that not all oak-aged beers are good, after trying the Weyerbacher Insanity, an oak-aged barley wine, which more than anything was just strange. Aging in oak bourbon barrels tastes good when you are drinking a porter or stout; leave the other ones alone. My favorite Southern Tier brew is their Pumking, a fall seasonal pumpkin beer. Southern Tier pushes the boundaries of flavor much like Dogfish Head, though they mostly push the limits on traditional styles of beer as opposed to creating "off-centered" beers.
Apparently this beer I'm drinking is a Raspberry Wheat Beer Malt Beverage. I'm not really sure what that means; I feel like malt beverage necessarily means it is not a beer but whatever, let's move on. I poured the whole bottle into my Southern Tier glass from Steal the Glass night at Capital Ale. I'm believe I went with Patrick to this Steal the Glass night. It might have even been one of the afternoons where we left work at 2pm to go downtown and drink. Yes that's how much we mattered where no one would notice if we left shortly after lunch. It sorta made up for some of the nights we had to drive to Sandston in the middle of the night to get the manufacturing line going. We didn't leave that early often, and I think at least once was after the company announced we were shutting down so our motivation was pretty low.
So this "beer" is decent. It has a more subtle raspberry flavor than I would prefer. Mostly the flavor doesn't linger. If you read my last beer posting, you know that sometimes that's a good thing. When it comes to fruit-flavored beers, I want the flavor to linger. At first I really liked the beer but teh more I drink of this bottle, the less impressed I become. I do taste a slight chocolate flavor which I was not expecting but I guess is a pleasant surprise. I'm not really sure where that is coming from as I would expect any chocolate introduced to change the color of the beer, which is not evident here. If you're in the market for a raspberry beer I would go with Clipper City Oxford Raspberry Wheat from Baltimore. I has a bolder flavor than the Southern Tier, one that hangs around long enough, but doesn't stay past its welcome. My all-time favorite raspberry beer was the Weyerbacher Raspberry Imperial Stout, which was a dark beer as opposed to a wheat. Unfortunately that has gone the way of my all-time favorite beer, also a Weyerbacher, the 10th Anniversary Decadence. Neither are available anymore and after talking to the brewmasters at Weyerbacher, there is no chance they are coming back. Fortunately for them, er me, they still make what is my new favorite beer, Heresy, an Oak-Aged Imperial Stout (naturally).
Verdict:
Don't buy the Southern Tier Raspberry Wheat. If you want Southern Tier, which I do recommend as a brewery, go for something else like their Robust Porter.
