This is my fifth beer. I designed the label for several fruit ales which I've made. I inserted the name of the fruit horizontally above the name "Ale." The first fruit beer, and perhaps my best ever, was the Evangelical Raspberry Ale. It was a beautiful pink ale with a frothy pink foam. I didn't have a wort chiller at the time, so it took 6 hours to cool it down in a bathtup full of ice water on an August day. Despite the complexity and my lack of knowledge about brewing at the time, this beer turned out excellently.
However, it is a common brewing saying that a beer is always better in the memory than in the mouth! So Dr. Martin Luther's Evangelical Raspberry Ale may be one of the best beers I ever drank, only in my mind (but don't take my word on it, ask someone else who has tried it, like Dr. Fred Tonsing).
My second version of this was the lazy man's version. Instead of fresh fruit which is headache to ferment and strain out, I used pure raspberry fruit concentrat (without any sugar) added at bottling time. It gave the taste of raspberries but no aroma which is half the points in a competition for a fruit beer. Needless to say, I didn't win any ribbons with this one (In Dec. of 1996). Maybe the 3rd time will be a charm.
GRAIN BILL and EXTRACTS: