Dessert Station - Hydra Strawberry Shortcake
Corporate Ladder Brewing Company

 

This one pours a green-ish, reddish color, just really gross looking, like baby diarrhea or baby vomit, with a small head, and just sticky gloopy lacing everywhere.

This smells like cake batter and cake frosting, candied strawberry, and ice cream.

This nails the flavors, so to speak, but it’s also just so heavy handed and unsubtle. It’s too thick and too sweet, even in small amounts. I’m sure there are people who enjoy this, but it’s kind of a monstrosity.

This is thick and glutinous, just too milky and creamy, with not the best drinkability.

This is just too much. It evokes strawberry shortcake if it was mushed together with melted ice cream and left out in the sun for a bit.

Redefining what gluten free beer means, Corporate Ladder is out to turn the beer industry upside down by creating a seltzer-based strawberry shortcake inspired drink.

As part of their Dessert Station series, Hydra Strawberry Shortcake seeps into the glass with a dense berry blush and mauve set of colors. Opaque and carrying a high visual weight, the scent of strawberries, cream, baking pastries and a tangy sense of wine spritzer tingle the nose. Its first generous sip shares a full sense of strawberry glaze, savory shortcake, vanilla cream and fructose in true smoothie form.

Little changes as the concoction broadens across the middle palate. The full saturation of cream laced sugars saturate the tastebuds with heavy cream, sugar, vanilla, a slight buttery character and a sweet milkshake character overall. Developing into a pleasantly tart character, the flavors of strawberry also share aspects of rhubarb, cranberry and pomegranate.

Full bodied, creamy and very straight forward, the dessert drink is less complex than fully leaded beer, but its a pleasant gluten free choice for those who prefer to drink their dessert.