100 Beers, 100 Days: Day #7

Posted on April 12, 2009 by Chris Lumens in .

Saranac Pomegranate Wheat

As a homebrewer, fruit beers are tough for me. I like some of them and have tried to make several fruit or spiced beers, but they almost always come out a total disaster. Either I get sick of the flavor long before I run out of beer or they end up as gushers that mostly go down the drain. So I tend to stick with store bought beers if I ever want anything with fruit added. I’ve had some luck with adding fruit concentrates but that’s just not the same.

That was my lame attempt at an introduction for today’s new beer - Saranac Pomegranate Wheat from the Matt Brewing Company in NY. I don’t know about other parts of the country, but here in New England it’s very common to find mixed cases of beers from a single brewery. It’s like a variety pack of their standard beers, plus a couple special seasonal bottles thrown in. These are great for parties since you can pick up a couple and have something for everyone. Well, I guess you can’t have something for those weirdos who claim to not like beer. This beer came out of such a sample pack.

I poured it into a typical pint glass, noticing almost no head. Perhaps I screwed up the pour but probably not. I’m getting pretty good at putting beer into a glass and then taking it back out. It had a pleasing light yellow color, typical of a hefeweizen. I also noticed the beer was well on the clear end of the spectrum, which is not typical of a hefeweizen. I forgot to check the bottle for any yeast, but I don’t think there was any. I should have given the bottle a swirl just to be on the safe side. To me, this says the beer could be filtered though the website disagrees with me.

I noticed a light berry aroma with no noticeable hop presence. Again, this is typical for a fruity wheat beer. Unlike a lot of the brewery websites I’ve been looking at this week, the Saranac site tells me the specific hop variety used: Columbus. I first tasted a mild fruity flavor that I guess is pomegranate (I don’t actually know what pomegranate tastes like), giving way to the American-style hefeweizen flavors towards the back of the mouth. For those of you who weren’t following along earlier this week, that means wheat and yeast instead of wheat, yeast, banana, clove, esters, etc. American style hefeweizens still aren’t my preference. In the finish, I once again detected the yeast as well as a little bit of hops.

As far as fruity beers go, this one is pretty well balanced. The fruit isn’t out of control, nor is the beer terribly sweet. It was in the 30s all day today so I don’t know that it was the best day for this kind of beer, but I can see how it would be very refreshing on a hot summer day. I still don’t think I would drink more than one or two in a sitting, though.

In Review

It’s been a week of beer so far. How am I doing at mixing things up?

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