Beer Review: Sea Dog Wild Blueberry Ale

Serving Type: Bottle

ABV: 4.6 percent

Appearance: Wild Blueberry Ale pours a light chroma of copper with a few golden highlights. This brew was more in the middle on a scale of darker stained and blond blueberry ales. Overall, a pretty color. There's a decent white head that has amazing retention. It'll stay atop the brew for the entire drink.

Smell: The blueberries are prevalent in this brew's aroma. Not only do you get some of the tartness, you get the fruit's sweetness as well. There's also a bit of grain and breadiness that gives you some pie/dessert effect (I need to officially name this theory soon). Through the appearance and smell, I'm envisioning biting into a thick and full blueberry pie. With the extra sweetness I picked up in the aroma, I mentally sprinkled some sugar atop the crust that caramelized during baking!

Taste: The taste was a home run. The blueberries are at the forefront, as they should be. It's a perfect combination of sweetness and tartness. The breadiness jumps in as a secondary flavor and acts as a good backbone to the fruit you get on the front. A very slight hop finish puts the explanation point on this beer.

Overall Rating: 

This is an all-timer for me. It's in my top-10 as a matter of fact. A fabulous fruit beer. Sweet and tart blueberries plus a nice malty backbone. If you have a special event such as a wedding in a summer, I highly recommend this. This is the last of the blueberry ales I was lucky enough to try this summer. It's fitting that I cram them all in now as this is the last day of August.

Beer Review: Boulder Kinda Blue

Serving Type: Bottle

ABV: 5.5 percent

Appearance: Kinda Blue pours a dark shade of copper that appears deeply stained with smashed blueberries, thus its dark blue highlights. The body of the beer looks very textured and appetizing with a good bit of fizzy carbonation. The head is off-white, slightly stained blue and starts off at the width of half of a finger.

Smell: I got plenty of grain in the aroma of this beer. There's also a sugary sweetness, which surprised me. There is a sense of the blueberries, but not as tart as I prefer them to be.

Taste: The grain smell I initially got in the aroma tasted a lot darker than I expected it to be, but it srongly got across that dessert/crust effect I love to have in fruit beers. As for the blueberries, the tartness that I could discern in the taste mixed quite well with the wheat grain that it was brewed with. Overall, a very pie-esque taste.

Overall Rating: 

I was fairly pleased with this beer. I was surprised to be drinking such a dark blueberry ale, as I'm used to them being more on the blonde side. The dark grain was an interesting take. I just wish for more blueberry presence.

Beer Review: Bar Harbor Blueberry Ale

Serving Type: Bottle

ABV: 5.2 Percent

Appearance: Bar Harbor Blueberry Ale pours a lighter shade of copper. It's almost an amber, but the deep purple highlights throughout the brew remind you that this is a fruit beer. There's a bluish-white head that is pretty foamy and has fair retention. Expect a decent amount of lacing on the inside of your glass.

Smell: This beer smells very, very sweet upon initial waft. Tart blueberries and a touch of maltiness flow in just behind that.

Taste: This is where it went wrong for me. The tart blueberry taste I expected seemed weakened. The maltiness I experienced in the aroma seriously lacked. It also came off as a touch too boozy for me. The ABV isn't the biggest number in the world, but I didn't expect to get much of it in this department.

Overall Rating: 

This is a really appetizing brew when you look and smell it. When I drink a blueberry ale, I like a brew that's stained by the fruit, as most blueberry ales are. This one has that and the tart aroma. Unfortunately the blueberry wasn't active enough in the taste. I was expecting big things from this beer as I've heard raving reviews about it.

Monday Rant: Homebrew Extracts

One of Beer Snob Sr.'s earlier homebrews.

I was visiting the infamous Beer Snob Sr. a few nights back to try one of his homebrews. This time it was the blueberry ale he had been working on.

Other homebrews I had the chance to try that were his included something from a kit called Cowboy Lager, which was some type of lager with a tart apple flavor, and a Honey Maibock.

His most recent creation was a blueberry ale which had a surprisingly dark tone to it. It was surprising to me since most blueberry ales I've come across in the past have had pure blonde bodies. It was his opinion that the blueberry taste wasn't as powerful as he expected.

Let it be known that he uses the Mr. Beer homebrewing set-up and that each of the kits he uses include some type of extract. (Remember that Beer Snob Sr. is not my father. In fact, he is a close friend that shares my interests in beer and great food. He's older than me and friends began to call us Beer Snob's Sr. and Jr.)

The kits that my father and I have used don't have extracts. We strive to use as many natural ingredients as possible. If any type of abstract is involved, we attempt to replace said extract with the original, and natural ingredient.

When Beer Snob Sr. complained about the lack of blueberry flavor, I pondered whether or not the flavor could have been more explosive if he had chosen to replace the extract with natural blueberries.

From experience, I know that the brewing experience gets that much harder when you decide to go the natural ingredient route. You also have to sometimes time the addition perfectly. It might benefit your beer's flavor if you wait to add the fruit during the secondary fermentation as opposed to the primary.

It does get more complex. Years ago I helped to make a cherry wheat beer with homegrown cherries only to have the top of the fermenter blow off in our coat closet. It's a tougher process when you replace the extracts, but I feel that the flavor ends up being more noticeable in the end.

Beer Review: Shipyard Smashed Blueberry

Serving Type: Draft


ABV: Nine percent


Appearance: I was really shocked when I saw this beer for the first time. When you see a beer with blueberry anywhere in its name, you don't necessarily expect to see this. Smashed Blueberry is almost a dark, black beer. I also noticed quite a few purple, yet blue tones floating around in the body. It features a flat, khaki head without much life to it. It's almost as if the dark color of the beer forbids the head to be adventurous.


Smell: The smell of this beer wasn't exactly sweet, but a slight tartness of blueberries is discernible. I also got a strong hint of roasted malts as well as some dark chocolate.


Taste: The malts and the dark chocolate are the two dominant flavors. The blueberry isn't as strong as I had hoped, but makes for a great finish on the back. In essence, the stronger flavors give way to the fruitiness at the end of a sip. The alcohol content is also noticeable on the tongue.


Overall Rating: 

This was a really interesting take on blueberry beers for me. I've never had one which featured darker and maltier flavors in front of the blueberry tartness. This beer was really enjoyable.