Brewery: Freigeist Bierkultur
Beer: Salzspeicher Raspberry
Style: Porter
ABV: 6%
Character: Sour Porter brewed with raspberry and salt
Ratings at time of Review: BA: n/a | RB: 81
Metal Connection: HELLWITCH – Nosferatu
BeerMetalDude Rating: 5/5
In my search for awesome beers from around the world, I found myself searching through the online store, craftbeerkings.com.I searched through their inventory and instantly loved the ghost logo for Freigeist Bierkultur, so I ordered this beer from them. Thanks to my good friend, Jorge Espinoza of animebeers.com for helping this beer get to me. It is great have friends such as Jorge. Cheers, my friend!
Doing a little research about the beer name and label, I found out that the Salzspeicher is a series of 6 brick buildings located in Lübeck, Germany which began as a salt srorage facility. Over time the building stored different goods, such as cloth, grain, and wood. In the 1922 film, Nosferatu, eine Symphonie des Grauens, a part of the complex was used as the residence of Count Orlock, the main character of the movie.
I really love the label of this beer, which features a photo of the famed building. The word Salzspeicher is draped across the label in a large font, which to me, reminds me of an old Ed Wood movie poster or something, maybe something sci-fi. The entire label is in a purple color, which works perfectly for this raspberry sour.
I poured this beer into a tulip style glass. Upon first gaze at the beer, it appeared to be a dark brown color, but after shining light through the beer, there were hints of a reddish-purple color. There was no real head on this pour, just a few bubbles on top, which did not last long, so there was no lacing on this glass.
The crazy part of the aroma of this beer is that the sourness is not very strong here. I was picking up hints of roasted malts, raisins, prunes, dark rye bread, wine grapes, and an undying aroma of tart raspberries. The lingering aroma was tart raspberries, and dark rye bread, reminded me of a fruit cake.
The taste was opposite of the nose. The tart raspberry flavor along with wine grapes hit the palate first. There is a quick follow up of roasted malts, raisins, prunes, dark rye bread, fruit cake. The aftertaste is raspberry and dark rye bread, again reminding me of a fruit cake.
The body is light-medium with a slick mouthfeel that has a tart mouth puckering tartness to it. This beer has a nice dry finish.
Overall, I gave this beer a high 5 out of 5 rating, cause as I love real sour beers, I also really enjoy beers such as this, that gives off a lighter tartness in the overall flavor, making this a very easy drinking beer. I know that sour beers aren’t for everybody, and everyday I talk to people at my bar who really hate sours. It is a beer like this one, though, that I think could be a perfect introduction beer into the world of sour beers. There is still a lot of the normal porter flavors involved with the touch of the tart raspberries, and a bit of sour funk. This beer is perfectly balanced with all the characters playing similar roles. On a side note, I am happy that beers from Freigeist Bierkultur are available here in Texas now. This particular beer is not here yet, but their other offerings are, so be expecting me to pick those up and review them here on the site. Check them out if you have the chance.
Metal Connection: The best connection I could think of was to give this beer a Metal touch of Nosferatu, since there is a nice connection between the beer name, label and the movie adaptation of the Nosferatu story. One of my favorite Metal tunes is called “Nosferatu.” This song comes to us from the Floridian Metal monsters known as Hellwitch. The band formed in 1984, and is still active today with one original member, Patrick Ranieri (guitar/vocals). Back around 1995 or so, I was doing a fanzine called Beyond the Grave, and I was in correspondence with Mr. Ranieri. I did a review for their 1994 demo, Anthropophagi, and if memory serves me correctly, I believe I even did an interview with Pat, back then. I have been a fan of their music since I first heard Hellwitch for the first time. In their career, they have only released two full length albums, Syzygial Miscreancy in 1990, which is where our song comes from, and Omnipotent Convocation in 2009. In between, there was a number of demos, EP’s and videos released. I was proud to have brought these guys to TX back in 2011 to play as part of my then annual fest that I had done for 5 years. Do yourself a favor, if you have not done so yet. Crank the shit out of the volume and click the video link.
Beer Metal Media 