Saskaberry
Minhas Craft Brewery

this is my favourite 40 if you have it at the right time of year.

1180ml bottle, Saskatoon berries the one and only theme of the expansive, by nature, label.

This beer pours a clear, medium purple/magenta hue, with zero head and zero lace - it really was like pouring grape juice at breakfast. It smells of cough syrup quality cherry/blueberry fruit - I should know, I sucked back enough of the real deal during my battle with a shitty cold last week - with a very slight generic malt undertone. The taste is over-sugared fruit juice - Saskatoons, actually - at least when they molest a fruit, Minhas and Co. molest the right fruit. As with the, heh, nose, there's an underlying, stampeded, really, faceless malt character that helps identify this offering as something not wholly to be found in the cheap section of the (Western Canadian, I just realized is pertinent here) grocery coolers. The carbonation is pretty scared to come out of its hidey-hole, and I don't blame it one bit, the body medium weight in an only slightly cloying fruity manner, and smooth enough, caeteris paribus. It finishes sweet and fruity, no surprise, a bit of booze the main protagonist in keeping this whole deal from delving too quickly into a cloying mess. Oh...and there it goes anyways.

Nothing like pandering to a local populace from a semi-foreign entity - I don't know if the idea for this came from MC head office in Calgary, but I guess I can kind of see their reasoning - those berries that grow wild in the river valley? Let's 'flavour' our next malt liquor 40oz with 'em, so as to enhance their appeal to those who eat and drink (and do everything else) outside. (Evil) genius!