by popular demand, well, one reader, actually, I’m resurrecting the long-dormant “Friday’s overrated Beer” feature. Keep in mind that just because a beer is overrated doesn’t necessarily make it bad. But somehow it just doesn’t live up to the hype.

Pink, sprightly, and dainty, Lindemans Framboise is the most readily available example of the Framboise lambic style. Once a rare bottled treat, you can now find Lindemans issuing forth from taps all over town. Unsurprisingly, this Framboise appeals primarily to female drinkers, many of whom have discovered it can be mixed with Hoegaarden to create an elegant beer cocktail colloquially known as the “dirty ho.”

So that’s how young beer discoverers first see the Framboise style, and it’s really not an accurate representation. Although it’s brewed in the traditional lambic way, open fermentation vessels, old farmhouse, spontaneous introduction of wild microflora and all that, the Lindemans take on the style is tooth-melting sweet. It’s pretty obvious that, instead of merely flavoring the sour lambic with raspberries, they add a shitload of raspberry flavoring and sugar as well.

Fruit lambics can range from this level of alcopop sweetness to almost vinegar sourness. As is so often the case with beer, the best fall somewhere in the middle. Needless to say, after only knowing Lindemans beers, you wouldn’t recognize most of the other lambics from Belgium.

And that’s why it’s overrated, a traditional, centuries-old farmhouse style reformulated by marketing guys for export to our nubian young happy hour chicks. And the formula is working well. Lindemans recognized earlier than most Belgian specialty breweries that their bread would be buttered on the other side of the pond. It’s good beer in its own way, but drinkers in pursuit of the true spirit of raspberry lambic would do well to hunt down a more complex Boon Framboise, or, for the really brave, Cantillon.

-Mark