Blueberry Weizenbier
Waterloo Brewing

 

473 mL can from TBS; dated Jun 11 2016 and served well-chilled. I can be pretty picky about blueberry beers, so we'll see how this goes.

Pours a hazy pinkish-amber colour, capped off with nearly an inch of soapy, off white-coloured froth. Retention is a bit weak for a weissbier; by the 2-3 minute mark it has receded to a dense collar and a few wisps upon the surface. Notes of slightly tart berry flesh on the nose, as well as hints of blueberry skin. Hints of grape juice, vanilla and some wheaty malt sweetness; smells juicy, a little sweet, and pretty enticing to me.

Tastes ok. There is a kind of syrupy, somewhat artificial-feeling blueberry flavour at the start, which lasts through much of the sip; it's a little sweet, but with almost no tartness whatsoever. The wheat malts provide a background bready flavour with hints of banana and blueberry muffin. Flash of vanilla at the end, followed by a surprisingly clean aftertaste. Fairly light in body, but starting to lean toward medium; the carbonation is prickly and assertive, with a smooth mouthfeel that suits this style of beer nicely. Something about the blueberry flavour is bugging me, but other than that this makes for a decent summer quaff.

Final Grade: 3.59, a B grade. Waterloo's Blueberry Weizenbier isn't bad - it's just not up my alley. The underlying wheat beer is acceptable, but the blueberry is a little too intense for my tastes. I don't know if they used real blueberries, flavouring, or a combination of both, but with the quantities they used it just tastes kind of unnatural - though not quite to the point of being off-putting (just distracting). This is why I'm so wary of blueberry beers - the size of that sweet spot window between "I can barely taste it" and "this tastes like extract" seems to be much, much smaller than with most of the other fruits typically employed in brewing. Worth a look, assuming the idea of a "blueberry weizenbier" cranks your gears at all.