Foodblogging: End of Summer Fruit Beers

Husband came home from Sinful Wine & Spirits the other night bearing a make-your-own sixpack.  Hit this up if you've never done this before.  They've got a giant cooler full of microbrews and a stack of empty sixpack holders and you can go to town.

He handed me two fruit beers.  Because I'm a girl.  And I like fruit beers, so nyah.

First up was Blue Dawg Brewing's Wild Blue Blueberry Lager.  And by Blue Dawg Brewing I mean Anheuser-Busch.  I'm not even going to comment on this little bait-and-switch.  Back to the beer.  It's good!  They left the lager slightly sweet and you can really taste the blueberries, but not in a fake blueberry flavor kind of way.  When it first hits your tongue you get the slightest bitterness of lager, then as hit rolls around your mouth you get blueberry.  It finishes smooth and surprisingly clean.

Next was Dark Horse Brewing's Raspberry Ale.  (Note to Dark Horse: check your <title> tags…or get your money back from K2 Medialab LLC.)  (Also, "Bee's"?)  I didn't like it quite as much as the Wild Blue but it's a strong contender.  It differs from your average raspberry ale in that the raspberry flavor is there as almost an afterthought.  You take something like Leinenkugel's Berry Weiss, and you can tell that the raspberry flavor comes in syrup form.  It's almost like raspberry Kool-Aid mixed with beer.  Dark Horse's Raspberry Ale is a strong ale with just a hint of real raspberry flavor to finish.  It's not the smoothest of ales.  What's odd about it is that it's extremely dry.  So if you're into that, there you go.  I personally am not into the feeling of not having drank anything at all after drinking it.  It would make a great shandy with freshly squeezed lemonade.  I could see drinking a whole bunch of those on a hot summer day.

Yay, beer!