Blue Berry Beer
Amburon Belgian Craftbrewery in Tongeren, Limburg, Belgium 🇧🇪
Fruit Beer Regular Out of Production|
Score
6.41
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Appearance - 8 | Aroma - 5 | Flavor - 6 | Texture - 6 | Overall - 3
Well-carbonated clear ruby to cyclamen beer under a towering, stable, pale pink head. Faint fruity/berry nose, sweetish. Huge head hampers perception. Not overly sweet, but the perception is definitely artificial - not difficult with the acesulfame. Even the faint fruitacidity is not entirely convincing. Still, none of the flavours comes over as foul, just - not convincing. Fizzy, bit slick, light to medium bodied. The label mentions BOTH "no colourants or flavourings added" AND "sweetener: acetame K". Wie fopt er Frederik, denkt-ie? 5/4/6/3/5
Appearance - 6 | Aroma - 6 | Flavor - 7 | Texture - 4 | Overall - 4.5
'Limburgian' blueberry ale commissioned by Streekmarkt.be, a local shop (also webshop) selling regional products; I have a suspicion that the blueberry juice used here comes from the Schrijnwerkers family in Meeuwen-Gruitrode, who also provides the blueberries for the Toëtelèr blueberry ales I tasted a couple of years ago at Wieze Bierfestival and which are effectively commissioned by Schrijnwerkers themselves, but this one is lower in ABV, only uses juice and is sweetened with acesulfame-K, an artificial sweetener two hundred times more sweetening than sugar - looks like I'm in for a ride here... Intricately and thickly 'papery' lacing, vaguely pinkish-tinged off-white, moussy and frothy, thick head eventually thinning and slowly opening in the middle over a cristal clear, beautifully and purely copper-hued red beer with visible sparkling, hazy with sediment. Aroma of blueberry juice indeed, quite a lot of manure (H2S) and cloggy farmland earth which just won't go away completely, soggy old bread, sugared rhubarb, beef broth, red candy, lilac blossoms in spring, egg yolk, blackberry jam, wet dog, cassis, chewing gum, background hints of caramel, damp tree leaves, soap, ketchup, tea bags and banana. Evidently fruity onset, lots of blueberry juice including this fruit's sweetness, sourness and herbal spiciness, with banana- and pear-like esters buried underneath; the sweetness and the sourness are present in more or less equal strength, with the first cloying to the teeth a bit - obviously aided by that acesulfame - and the latter effectuating a superficially dryish effect, with both factors struggling for attention. Fizzy, bit minerally carb, supple and lean, slick and soapy mouthfeel; caramelly and lightly bready maltiness underlies an ongoing sweet-and-sour blueberry juice flavour which gets all the credits here. The battle is solved in the finish, where cloying sweetness persists more strongly than any leftover fruit acidity; breadiness lingers, with chewing gum-like 'Belgian' estery effects, a hint of 'retronasal wet dog' (I guess you need to be a beer geek to comprehend this combination of words) and an only very faint, superficial, somewhat earthy hop bitterish accent that goes lost into the whole. Sweetness lingers and unpleasantly sticks to the teeth, but the sourness continues as well, so that the finish is less horribly sweet than I was fearing, even though it is still way too sticky sweet for me. Spicy notes too, probably of a phenolic nature. Comparable with the Toëtelèr blueberry ales made for the blueberry farmer in Meeuwen-Gruitrode, a simple yet 'artisanal' Belgian fruit ale, but ruined by the addition of that artificial sweetener - no matter if it can technically replace sugar or not, a full-fledged unsweetened version of this beer would certainly have been a much better option. The basic beer is clearly a simple, somewhat soapy Belgian ale, massively buried under a heavy load of not just blueberry juice, but acesulfame sweetness as well, which should have been omitted. Too sweet and old-fashioned for me even if, admittedly, the choice of fruit is everything but old-fashioned in Belgian context, and not free of manure-like, off-putting off-flavours either. Could have been so much better if only the basic beer were better bodied and the pseudo-sugary but annoyingly sweet acesulfame had been left out!
Appearance - 6 | Aroma - 7 | Flavor - 7 | Texture - 6 | Overall - 6.5
Purple with soapy head. Aroma is slightly floral and soapy. Sweet blueberry taste with just enough tartness.
Appearance - 6 | Aroma - 6 | Flavor - 7 | Texture - 6 | Overall - 9
At Gents Bierfestival 2017. Pours pink, unclear creamy. Medium sized head. Smell is fruity, creamy. Taste is full, bit tart, fruity, full. Not bad
Appearance - 8 | Aroma - 7 | Flavor - 6 | Texture - 6 | Overall - 7
Thank you for sharing RB Crew! Sampled 330 ml. bottle @ GBF 2017. Dark red blueberry juice appearance with little pink head. Nose is metallic, dull muted fruit, little sweetness & not that fruity either. Taste is overtly metallic with dull low grenadine fruit profile, mildly sweet & metallic but not overly fruity. Dull metallic body, empty. Meh.
Appearance - 8 | Aroma - 6 | Flavor - 6 | Texture - 6 | Overall - 6
Imported from my RateBeer account as Amburon Blue Berry Beer (by Amburon Belgian Craftbrewery NV):
Aroma: 6/10, Appearance: 4/5, Taste: 6/10, Palate: 3/5, Overall: 12/20, MyTotalScore: 3.1/5
19/VIII/17 - 33cl bottle @ Gents Bierfestival - BB: n/a (2017-1268) Thanks to the Belgian ratebeer crew for sharing today's beers and celebrating my 10K!
Cloudy bright deep pink to purple beer, creamy light pink head, pretty stable, adhesive, leaving a nice lacing in the glass. Aroma: very malty, grains, bit metallic, cow fodder. Where's the fruit? Smells more like a German pilsener. Taste: malts, grains, bit sweet, some cow fodder, hay. Tastes like a German pilsener as well. Aftertaste: fruity touch (finally!) with a sweet finish, slightly acidic and a little bitter from the tannins (probably the blue berry skins?). For a blue berry beer this is disappointing... I'm not saying I want a syrupy sweet fruit beer, but you want at least the smell and flavour of the blue berries obviously coming through. That's lacking here.