Small Batch: Blueberry Beer
Russian River Brewing Company

510 mL bottle. Purple body. Smells of blueberry, light green vegetal aromas, vanilla, and oak. Taste has a remarkably good blueberry flavor. I haven't had a blueberry flavor as good as this in years. Excellent. The only downside is a slight bandaid flavor in the back end after all the other flavors die down. It's very unfortunate that it's there at all, because this could have been a stunningly good blueberry beer. What a fickle berry this is.

 

Appearance: Pours a clear blueberry juice color with a one finger mauve head that fades to a ringlet; a few shards and squiggles

Smell: Earthy funk with more of a blackberry aroma than one from blueberry; jammy and oaky

Taste: Tart berry flavors at the outset, with blueberry and blackberry fruit emerging; dry and oaky, in the middle, with the tartness returning to build through the finish

Mouthfeel: Medium body with moderate to high carbonation; puckery

Overall: The most sour of the three small batch fruited sours in the collection, yet somehow the fruit didn't ring as true as I had hoped

picked this up at the brewery earlier this year and glad i did, it was one of the best beers of blueberry night last night, so good. its got some really wild lambic type character on the ferment, which would make this delicious and special beer in its own right, but then its got one of the purest and most authentic expressions of blueberry i have known in a beer on top of it, which really makes this a winner. pretty purple red color on it, looks pretty light, its fizzy in the liquid but doesnt hold a ton of head, just some patchy lace along the edges after a minute. the nose is amazing, maybe the best part of this, super bretty and mature, lots of oak, both red and white wine notes, the natural sweetness of the berry, a hint of vanilla and cream even, a bacterial tang but not overly acidic, my mouth waters anyway, love the maturity and depth. the flavor is astounding, so much berry and all up front, big red wine notes, even pinot noir specifically, a hint of cherry too and maybe blackberry as it warms. more acidic than it smells, but still with a fully wild lambic type complexity, super rustic and old world to me, love the fermentation profile on this. the skins of the berries make it tart too, a get some iodine and wet animal weirdness which i also like, and then a surprisingly dry finish for how fruity this is. russian river has never lost its luster after all these years, and finding sexy bottles like this, which i have never seen from them before, was awesome. this was a hit in our group, awesome expression of the fruit, nice and woody, and really funked out. elite level beer!