Purple Gas
Big Rock Brewery

 

 

 

 

 

I think Big Rock made this beer by mixing Grasshopper with that "blueberry" pancake syrup you find at many chain breakfast places. If you have a serious sweet tooth when it comes to beer, I guess you might like it, but I thought it was awful. I am loath to not finish a beer, but this one went straight down the drain. The appearance of this beer is it's only strong point. It is quite a lovely golden colour with a slightly better head than grasshopper. It is all down hill from there, unfortunately. The saskatoon berry flavour is overwhelmingly sweet, and the honey even more so. It leaves a cloying sweet aftertaste on your tongue reminiscent of Mountain Dew. This beer does not even have the refreshing qualities of many fruit beers due to the lack of acidity and the heavy feel. Give this a pass unless you are a humming bird. This is the worst Big Rock product I have tried to date, including Alberta Genuine Draft.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Reformulated (slightly) for 2016, the newest release of Purple Gas eschews the agave for local honey--a move no doubt designed to appease the hoards of locavores drinking beer these days. Not having had the old agave version, I can't comment on the difference, but here's what I can say:

This is a fine beer, built--no doubt--on a base of Grasshopper (or something very closely related to Grasshopper--and so your tolerance for Purple Gas will probably line up with your tolerance for that and for the addition of sweets. Because this is a sweet beer. The berry component feels genuine, but I find the honey comes down too heavily in the finish, leading to a syrupy feeling on the tongue and throat that takes away from what is otherwise a decent little beer. Grainy, fruity flavours, wheat, faint clove, fresh berries. Initial tartness that's actually quite nice . . . and then that syrupy finish. So close!