Blueberry Press
Insight Cellars Brewing & Blending

a beer of the year candidate for me this year, man i dont think i can recall a better beer in recent memory, holy cow this is fabulous, everything i look for in a wild ale, so refined, mature, distinctive, unique on the ferment, and super dialed in, the best ive had from insight so far in limited exposure, 2021 vintage shared extremely generously by a homie, so good to have beer friends, this floored me! its made with blueberries that were macerated and pressed on their own apparently before being blended into the beer, which im not sure if ive head of that before or not, but it seems to have added an indelible honest and pure blueberry intensity to both the aroma and flavor, but also this isnt at a level that the rest of the beer nuance is lost to the fruit, so well proportioned its crazy. there is a violet color to this, but its not heavy purple saturated, lots of head and carbonation, epic bottle conditioning on it too, and im sure time has been kind to the texture, light haze to it, very pretty, it holds some absolutely weightless white head, wispy and slow fading, racing bubbles the whole time. aroma is intoxicating, so good i can already taste it, and i swear i could just sniff on this and be just about as equally satiated as i was by actually consuming it, fruit and its tannins, dark and kind of heavy, red winey to me, the skins apparent, super deep and obvious as blueberry, but its the ferment more than the fruit that strikes me, champagne character, tons of brett, iodine and bleach and medical funk, musty and mature but also bright and tart, not particularly sour, this is more wild than bacterial, rustic with some sort of white peppery saison-esque elements, wheaty grain base it seems too, still a factor here, amazingly cohesive, sense heightening, and unique, i am in awe, and the flavor follows the nose in step, amazing intermingling of the tangy ripe blueberry with the wild yeasts and oak character, pure blueberry, port wine, black currant, even some bitterness among the fruitiness, neat minerality with the earthy dry grain, very mature brett brux type funk, sort of animal-like, musk, and for how complex it is, its also very quick, huge bubbles in this and tons of them give it a champagne feel that pushes it along very quickly, each sip dry and kind of immediately gone, so each taste its all new again, which is a total treat. i taste a little more from this each pull, purple florals, wet oak and high end vanilla, subtle lemon and white wine, blackberry with the blueberry to me as it warms, cedar and sandalwood too, belgian esters, all the funk in the world. cannot say enough about this one, a high point for wild ale for me really, lambic-like but also its own thing, as good as it gets and worth every penny they ask for it...