I already submitted my piece for the Craft Beer and Brewing top beers of 2017, but good lord if this doesn’t belong in those rankings. Aside from it’s absurd rarity pegged at 100 bottles, $50 each, 1 per top 100 FF member, I didn’t know shit about this. I just assumed it would be a more baller Framrood. This is an entirely different beast altogether. American-inspired pLambic can be dicey territory, Methoededes notwithstanding. Funk Factory butters its bread by reconciling the Belgian and American iterations and this takes things to incredible new foraged territory. The beer is made exclusively with wild grown, scavenged and gathered, blackcap raspberries. This wasn’t a produce order or some tired ass Sysco purée order, we are talking Vibrams on the ground, Paleolithic picking of tiny ass berries. Alright, but even Scratch Brewing and Fonta Flora leverage bizarre shit: what sets this apart? First and foremost the base wild ale is dripping in cross Atlantic charm, musky, cheesy, Brie rind and coiled rope, wet track, balsa wood and cork board. It’s a fruity tannic arts and crafts project that seems intensely old like some Doesjel coupled with a red Burgundy. Underscoring this effect, the body is tepid and almost still, the mouthfeel has this Napa cab heft to it that avoids acidic or basic ass jam and gives what alcoholics call “a moment of clarity.”

 It’s a quiet and focused berry juicer, nothing sticks out and the produce is this osteoporosis dry, grape leather affair. The body and depth make this bottle almost inherently ethereal and gone before you pop it. It is not meant to be shared and it unpacks sour rhone barrel-soaked ropes in an odd merger of high and low class. In a field that is often looked down upon, when the Funk Factory bottles hit their mark, it is a compelling argument for an inversion of this tired rag. God forbid someone suggests that an American could somehow make a raspberry beer better than trifling dead ass 2014 Framboos, I’ll allow you to gather your berries you just knocked off no doubt falling from your chair. In sum this beer stomps new paths and is a rare light in an increasing darkness of lactic, boring, overfruited, kettle-soured dog turds.