I went out today to pick up Sierra Nevada's Torpedo that Dubya posted about last month. No luck. I learned instead that the IPA has become so popular (due solely to this website's review I'm sure) that it quickly sold out. I also learned that the brewery used some hard-to-find hops and has to wait for more to grow before it can brew more.
I was out to buy a new beer though, so I did pick up something I hadn't tried before.
I have had blueberry beers, and I've liked them. I'm usually a fan of dark beers and stout, but I occassionally like something sweeter too. The time seemed right for a blueberry beer.
Wild Blue blueberry lager from Blue Dawg Brewing in upstate New York seemed worth a shot. I hadn't heard of the brewery before, but I'm sure there are hundreds of great breweries I haven't heard of. I wasn't going to let that stop me.
I poured the beer to check out the look of it too. It was bluish red in color with a foamy purplish pink head. "My daughter would like this color," I thought. Still, I didn't let the look of it stop me; it wasn't really surprising from a blueberry lager anyway.
Then I tasted it.
Crap. Seriously. Crap. And I don't use that word lightly. It tasted like someone poured fake blueberry flavoring and artificial sweetener into a bad beer. And the color was probably fake too.
Only then did I do a little Googling to learn that my Blue Dawg Brewery was actually Anheuser-Busch. I don't have anything against that company (although I don't normally buy their beer), but their name isn't even on the damn bottle. If it were, I would have picked a different blueberry beer.
According to the Anheuser-Busch press release about Wild Blue, it's a full-bodied beer "not suited for timid or reserved beer drinkers." I don't think it's suited for anyone. Not even the dog on the bottle.
Has anyone else tried this? Anyone else been tricked by a major brewer? Now, I'm off to try a new beer from Magic Hat. At least I know where those really come from.
2 comments:
Oh man, that's miserable -- and now you are stuck w/ 5 more of them..... it might make a decent blueberry beer bread.
Yuck. For what it's worth, I had a coupla pints of Sea Dog Blueberry Wheat on tap earlier this week, and it was pretty damned good.
Post a Comment