Complementary Colors
Collective Arts Brewing

 

 

 

Well, it pours blueberry color, fairly cloudy with a short-lived but spectacularly hued blueberry foam head. It isn't "pulpy" and certainly isn't a "smoothie" type fruit beer.

Straight up delivers what it says on the can as soon as the top pops. Maple. Blueberry. Lemon. Done...I can't find anything else in the aroma, but it is absolutely huge. It's filling the room...seriously...the missus could smell it from the family room...

Ok...I'm not gonna lie. I really enjoy the taste and it certainly puts me in mind of a blueberry pancake doused in maple syrup. It hits extremely sweet like maple sugar candy but the lemon eventually comes in and cleans up the palate. Heavy blueberry rides somewhere in the middle and I find it extremely tea-like even carrying a little bitterness. Oddly that adds to the pancake effect kind of like a bit of char on the edge of the pancake where the butter burned a tad. Once all that nonsense goes thru and you think the party is over, there is an enormous aromatic sledgehammer hit of blueberry and lemon. A very good thing because it really completes the taming of the sweet maple that dominates early in the taste. To me, the sour is all driven by the blueberry and lemon, not the base beer. I pick up some bready malt hiding in the shadows, but essentially it melds into the overall effect. But my word, the olfactory component of the taste is amazing - fantastic aromatics.

Not a slushy or smoothie fruit beer at all, it is medium bodied at best.

Another beer I am thoroughly enjoying, but another that begs the question of what it actually is. It's an adjunct-driven kettle sour I guess is the way to look at it. It delivers the intent of the brewer in spades. I like the look. The smell is awesome, the flavor hits a whole bunch of happy spots for me, and the aromatic effect in the taste is insane. It's bold, outspoken, unabashed. I have to admit it is heavily flavored (ok...it had to be said) by the subjective liking fun factor. I'm beginning to think for this type of beer, that is how it needs to be. I can't see scoring it as a straight fruited kettle sour where it'd struggle to be average.

Hands-down one of the best sours I've had to date. Will add can pic. Great berry smoothie tastes, lots of malt to balance, thick, but not smoothie thick. well-crafted. This kind of thing will keep me coming back for more of the style.