4.2 Alcohol by Volume
Color of Head #FFEDB7
Color of Body #B79328

I've had a long, soggy day at Dollywood and now I'm ready to unwind with my trusty relaxation combo of Digg, Stumbleupon, and the delicious nectar of the Gods that is wheat beer. Tonight, we look at yet another fruit flavored wheat beer. I've had the Abita Purple Haze before and didn't like it, but I think it was before my taste in beer had fully matured, so I'm hopeful. Plus, I always like a change of pace. I think that's why I like trying the fruit flavored stuff. They are never perfect, but they are definitely unique. And I would much rather have a beer to review that is either great or terrible than one that sits in the middle. It's hard for me to write when I am inspired by neither anger nor enthusiasm. Here's to hoping for more than mediocrity! *DING*

Purple Haze pours a nice, relatively thick foamy head that dissipates over about two minutes. No lacing around the glass, but that is to be expected. The head smells, of course, of raspberries, but also heavily of yeast. It reminds me almost of fresh baked bread, which is really odd. But then again, I could also swear I smell some leaf spinach, or some kind of vegetable in there. Yeast is such an unusual part of the beer. It gives it so many unexpected flavors and smells that are all so relative and particular to each individual person. Oddly enough, I see no hint of a purple color in the beer. On first taste, I get more of that bready yeastiness and surprisingly little raspberry taste. It's also very thin with an extremely minimal aftertaste. I've found with the Purple Haze that if you hold your nose while you drink it, it seems exactly like carbonated water. It's that smooth and even. And that is a good thing to try and do with a beer, but it is done just a little too much here. There's no character to it! It's just sort of bleh, which saddens me.

Regarding the raspberry flavor, it seems to be an ongoing problem for me that I have a really hard time finding a fruit flavored beer that really reconciles both the smell and the taste. By that, I mean you smell so much of a heavy raspberry smell that you are expecting a mouthful of berries when you take a sip, but when you get that sip, you get only a hint of the raspberry taste you were expecting. Now I'm not asking for raspberry syrup to be thrown in here to make a Shirley Temple-like concoction, but there are better ways to accomplish what Purple Haze is trying to do (see Sweetwater Blue). I really hope Abita discovers Sweetwater soon.

This is a slightly better than average tasting beer that does have some really strong points. The biggest ones being that it is very smooth and even, very summery, and ridiculously easy to drink. The downsides are that there isn't a lot of flavor, what flavor is there is boring, and that you experience cognitive dissonance from trying to reconcile the raspberry smell with the taste. 77/100.