Birthday Cake - 2 Year Anniversary
Source Farmhouse Brewery

Picked this up at the Bottle King in Livingston a few months back as I love Source and have pretty much been getting my hands on anything that I can find from them. To call this a typical Fruit and Field beer was a stretch since this was so much more than just some puree or fermented juice in a can. This was a clear (not in hue) winner as it was nicely balanced, wonderfully smooth, and nearly devoid of any overt alcoholic presence!

This poured like pure berry as it was murky, relatively thick, and reddish-blue in hue as the lighter pink head filled up a nice amount of my pint glass. A thick, double-layered ring remained about a third of the way down the side of my pint glass as there was a nice amount of spotty and drippy lacing the rest of the way down. Loads of strawberries in the nose with some blueberry, vanilla beam, and shortcake underneath that as milk sugar, cake, lactose, and a hint of Pilsner Malt rounded out the full-bodied and balanced taste. Not overtly sweet nor gritty like supermarket-bought birthday cake, this wasn't that sour even though it had lactobacillus and a fruit-forward yeast strain in it. IMHO, this deserved to be placed into a category by itself!

Sure, there was booze here and I felt a slight buzz when I finished this off but it was hard to tell if was a berry overdose, a sugar rush, or just the alcohol kicking in. Canned on 8/4 with "HBD TO ME!" written underneath it, this was a fabulous beer with an equally wonderful label that looked a bit like the cake it wanted to emulate. Glad to find this and glad to see that these guys are on the proverbial map here in New Jersey, as they've come a long ways over the last two years.

Their best beer yet.