MEET ROSEE D’HIBISCUS

Anyone who tells you that great label art is meaningless on a beer is full of it. I’m certain that DE DOLLE, O’DELL, LOST ABBEY and now Quebec’s DIEU DU CIEL sell at least 10% more than they otherwise would due to their fantastic label art, just as I’m certain that BOULDER BEER and GREEN FLASH sell that much less because of theirs. So here come ROSEE D’HIBISCUS, and she’s a fine-looking, if a little bewildered, girl – plump lips, waifish gaze and flowers in her hair. DIEU DU CIEL are a highly-regarded newish Canadian brewer (certainly new to me), and I’ve been reading a lot about their wares recently. I tried ROSEE D’HIBISCUS the other night, and before I go into it, lemme tell you what the brewer has to say about it:

Rosée d’Hibiscus is a soft spoken wheat beer. The rose colour comes from the hibiscus flowers added during the brewing process. The aromas and flavour of this tropical flower are very prominent in the beer, giving it a slight acidity and a very agreeable fragrance. It is the perfect thirst quencher on a hot summer day.

It is flowery for sure. My drinking partner that night said, “I’m not sure that’s even beer”. I think it is. The use of this hibiscus “adjunct” gives this highly-carbonated beer a slight sourness and the vague taste of apricots. It is thin-bodied, and a bit spicy. It may very well be a wheat beer, but if you’d asked me to throw darts at a board I’d have had a better chance of picking “wheat beer” as the quote-unquote style for this one. An experimental fruit/flower beer all the way. It’s certainly a nice scientific concoction and a credit to DIEU DU CIEL’s brewing prowess, but probably not something I’d have repeatedly. 7/10.