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Beer Reviews

Blueberry Ale

BluCreek Brewing
Madison, WI
USA
http://www.blucreek.com/

Style: Fruit Beer

Jill’s Rating:
   (Recommended)


Comments:
When I first popped open my bottle of BluCreek's Blueberry Ale, I had a sudden flash of Boo Berry cereal, and I got a bit worried about a beer with an overly sweet, fake tasting blueberry flavor. However, this beer is made with whole wild blueberries. And wild blueberry juice. And natural flavor. Whatever that is.

This beer pours pretty dark for an ale--the ale is a deep amber, but it's got a dark tint thanks to the fruit. The head is huge--thick and foamy. The nose doesn't have a ton of fruitiness to it, though I did get a fair whiff of it.

The blueberries do a lot to to mellow out the ale. Any hoppiness it has is pretty much smoothed over. The fruit flavor comes in at the end of the taste, and it's fairly subtle. The nice thing is that you can tell it's made with real fruit. The juice and natural flavor don't take anything away from the brew, and they definitely don't add a fake taste that some fruit beers try to get away with.

But for all this beer has going for it, I'm only giving it three mugs. It'd be a little better if it had a bit of hop spice in the taste. Since the blueberry aspect is really subtle, it doesn't add as much as I'd think it would, and while the end product isn't bad, it's sadly just average.

Reviewed by Jill Jaracz on March 16, 2009.

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