Fruit Hog - Wild Berry Wheat Ale
Brewsters Brewing Company & Restaurant - Eleventh Avenue

A cheap date night pint of the current Fruit Hog offering.

This beer appears a clear salmon-tinged medium amber hue, with one finger of thin, creamy off-white head, which leaves a mostly unbroken paint job of lace around the glass as it hastily settles.

It smells of fruity, sugary mixed field berries, a bit of somewhat crisp wheat grain, and a slightly metallic, generic edge. The taste is fairly in line with the aroma - pleasantly muddled berries, edging on the upper threshold of sweet, yet a bit more tempered in terms of fruitiness, with some overburdened stringent wheat malt, and leafy hops keeping things clear of Bubblicious territory.

The carbonation is crisp, and supportive, the body medium weight, due in part to the fruity sugar component, and accordingly smooth. It finishes still rather sweet, the inferred fruit acids and restrained wheat edge barely holding on.

While this seems at first to be a cloying fruit bomb, it turns out to escape that fate - a cutting, multifaceted offset saves the day, and actually becomes the real reason for me disabusing the notion of a second round.