Mikkeller SD Fruit Face

Product description: Fruit Face is an incredibly refreshing Berliner Weisse with loads of raspberries and @2ndcraft Rye Whiskey Barrel Aged Ethiopian coffee beans. 4% ABV

Mikkeller San Diego Fruit Face (Raspberry & Coffee Berliner Weisse) – On tap at the brewery. 4% abv.

Fruit Face is a combination of flavors I’ve never experienced before: a raspberry Berliner Weisse that is infused post-fermentation with rye bourbon barrel-aged Ethiopian coffee. The result is nothing sort of phenomenal.

This one is opaque, neon pink in the glass with a baby pink-colored, meringue top of foam. Fruit Face has a stunning aroma of decadent tiramisu, buttery chocolate ganache, rich butterscotch, and caramel macchiato iced coffee. The flavor is a 180 with sour, jammy raspberry and waves of lactic acid-derived yogurt creaminess. The two sensations combining into one drink make for quite the entertaining beer.

Before this beer, it seems only Modern Times has been experimenting with barrel-aged coffee added to beers. I don’t believe, though, that Modern Times has added barrel-aged coffee to a sour base, so Fruit Face is possibly the first of its kind. I must say the experiment is a major success. Sampling this on tap at Mikkeller SD as well as from sharing two different 16oz cans from the release this past week, Fruit Face has been consistently a show stopper.

In the future, I would like to see the exquisite coffee aromas also manifest themselves in the flavor. Fruit Face has so much sour raspberry and is so firmly a fruited Berliner Weisse, that any coffee in the taste is quickly drowned out. I think there is a lot of potential here and look forward to new creations in Mikkeller’s specialty canned series.