This is the first time I tried a Rauch beer. I had no idea what I was getting myself into, as it didn’t occur to me to look up what Rauch meant in German (and I already forgot): smoke.

Fujizakura Heights Beer’s Rauch pours a semi-cloudy amber body from its super-hippie bottle (whoever came up with that design must’ve had a good supplies of weed). Its head is a quickly disappearing small, creamy white layer. On the other hands, it leaves behind strong, solid lacing.

While the color doesn’t say much about the beer, the nose does all the more. It smells smokey. Personally it reminded me of a certain kind of smoked cheese I used to eat a lot when I lived with my parents. There is also another side to it, a smell that I know well from an incense stick a friend of mine brought me as a souvenir from India (Darshan’s “Intimate”). Google couldn’t tell me what’s the aroma in that incense.

The body’s on the lighter side of medium, and there’s a fizzy carbonation to it as well. The taste is centered around the smokey malts. Even though “smoked” as a taste brings forth salty associations (cheese, bacon) in general (at least for me), in this case it’s the sweetness itself that is smokey. That makes the taste as a whole not feel so sweet, allowing space for the light bitterness to make an appearance.

While it definitely was a unique experience to drink such a smokey beer, I couldn’t get myself to honestly like it. Tiggers don’t like smokey beer.