Dogfish Head's Fort

I know, fruit beers are girly, right? Except when they're not.

This one is a huge beer. Brewed with a literally a ton of pureed raspberries over a ridiculously long two month fermentation period, this beer is billed as the world's strongest fruit beer. At 18% ABV, I'm sure they're right. The lengthy fermentation also allows for the beer to mellow up for such a high alcohol content as well, and the fact that the raspberries are pureed makes them easily subsumed by this beer during conditioning.

Fort pours amber, a surprise for a raspberry beer. It has a small tan head that quickly thins to a collar. Decent carbonation with huge bubbles, the biggest I've ever seen in a beer.

Whoa. It was at this point that I had to come back to see how much alcohol this had. I like to review beers without reading too much about them, and I hadn't read about the enormous amount of alcohol or details on the amount of raspberries. With the alcohol smell is a raspberry twang that's familiar but I can't place. Kind of like a Jolly Rancher--but in a good way.

Yep. A malty Jolly Rancher with an alcohol bite that grabs you as if it were a weak liquor.

I like it. It has a twangy sweetness that keeps it from being too syrupy, which is a problem with many fruit beers, and the alcohol is also surprisingly in check. It's there though, and there's no doubt about it. It's just a couple of points behind the alcohol content in Dogfish's 120 Minute IPA but it is remarkably easier to drink. In a big beer like this with so much fruit and alcohol, there is little of the malt to taste but it does contribute greatly to the smooth feel of the beer. The carbonation and high alcohol content lighten the body up quite a bit, as well as the taste, and help keep it from being too syrupy.

This is the first fruit beer I've ever had that tasted like real fruit. Admittedly I've had limited exposure, but the others were syrupy and/or overly sweet. It's so big and there's so much of it that it should definitely be shared. Great dessert beer.