I did not pick Liberty as a brewery that would jump aboard the milkshake sour craze but I’m glad they did. Liberty have made their name with punchy hop-driven beers like Yakima Monster, Knife Party and Citra. This is slightly left-field for the Helensville brewery but it’s also on-brand in the sense that Raspberry Roller (6.4 per cent ABV) captures a real Americana milk bar feel that ties in with the Statue of Liberty of look on the cans. So it works. And so does the beer. The raspberry flavour is densely packed in on a lactose-rich body and they’ve avoided the temptation to deliver a vanilla hit, which sets this apart from a lot of others in this field. Remarkably, given the lack of vanilla, the lactose and berry sweetness perfectly offsets the sour background — and in many ways the kettle souring serves as an aid to the silky smooth texture rather than flavour. In short, it delivers what it sets out to do, it is a delicious raspberry milkshake beer.