Heliocentric - Blueberry
New Trail Brewing Company

I have been relegated to drinking just one (1) beer a day due to my current USPS job, which requires that I work 6 days/week, 10.5 hours/day. I CAN do it & have adjusted nicely (sort of), but I find that it is usually one upon returning home & then off to bed to reChArNge for the next night. Yes, I am working the night shift, but I actually enjoy it! I CAN run a couple/few errands during the day, if I am so motivated & inclined + I really like many of my fellow night shifters where the day people are less so.

I was recently staring into the abysss, I mean, watching a little TV, when I happened to realize that I had a subsCANtial amount of New Trail CANs in abeyance & decided to revisit them for yet CANother brewery horizontal. This shall be the fourteenth of this newest set.

From the CAN: "A New Trail Brewing Co. Foreign Objects & Discord Collaboration"; "Tart Ale brewed with Blueberries"; "Keep Cold[,] Drink Fresh"; "Brewed in collaboration with Foreign Objects and Discørd".

I have to cop to the idea that this one has been over at Dominion Pizza (Columbia Avenue) for some little while, but I kept glossing over it since Tart Ales are not really my thing. I finally realized that I was doing myself a disservice & pulled the trigger on the purchase during my most recent visit.

Sister (?) site Untappd reports that this one was brewed with wheat, which is fine, plus it opened the door for an inverted Glug following the Crack! of the vent. Man, did this one ever burst forth with foam! I got two-plus fingers of foamy, soapy, rocky, magenta (!) head with decent retention for my efforts. Color was a cloudy, turbid Plum/Byzantium/Tyrian (SRM = N/A). Simply put, a deep shade of reddish-purple! 8=O Nose smelled like the time that my parents took me, as a young lad, to a local orchard/fruit farm to pick my then-favorite blueberries! 8=O To say that this beer was redolent with blueberry would be an understatement. It was definitely fruit-driven! Mouthfeel was thin to medium, not watery, but not far removed, either. Oh well. CAN't have everything. The taste, while absolutely blueberry, also had a wheaty flavor, giving it a blueberry CANcake-like quality.

How much did I love blueberries as a kid? I liked blueberry pancakes with blueberry syrup for breakfast, a Tastykake blueberry pie with my sack lunch & blueberry pie for dessert at suppertime! I CANtracted trench mouth during camp one summer & had to paint my mouth & teeth with Gentian Violet to cure it, but nobody noticed since my teeth always had a purplish cast from all of the blueberries. This beer really took me back!

An argument CAN be made for calling this a Wild Ale since it does read "Tart Ale" on the label, but a) I think that Tart/Sour Beer fans would be disappointed & b) at no time did I lose sight of the blueberry flavor. It was the fruit that was driving this one, not the light tartness. Finish was semi-dry, not really sweet, but certainly never tart enough to be CANpletely dry. This was a CANsidered purchase that I do NOT regret having made. YMMV.