Collective Arts Puts Its Berry Best Foot Forward
April 30, 2020Whether it’s artists like Girl Talk or the genius who brought peanut butter and jelly together, people have found success in putting seemingly polar opposite elements together since forever.
Nowhere is this more evident than the latest offering from Canada’s Collective Arts Brewing: Blueberry Sour with Cacao Nibs. While there’s a bevvy of beers made with blueberries and a ton of stouts and porters that have their chocolate flavor enhanced by cacao, it’s rare to see the two together. And to see them team up in a sour adds a whole new dimension to the flavor.
Like many fruited sours, the color of this beer is eye-catching, falling somewhere between a beet color and magenta, with a rose-colored head on top. It might remind you of your Crayola 64 pack or the “purple stuff” from the SunnyD commercials of yesteryear. A sniff yields dominant scents of blueberry and chocolate frosting, like chocolate cake topped with fruit.
Despite the hints of sweetness in the aroma, make no mistake, this is still a sour ale. It’s refreshingly tart with prevalent blueberry flavor, which is followed by a warm cocoa finish. Imagine shaving a little dark chocolate onto Greek yogurt with blueberries, to give it a decadent touch without going into dessert mode.
While the combination of blueberry and cacao may give you pause, this collision of two flavor worlds results in a light bodied and refreshing beer that doesn’t disappoint. Additionally, the blueberry-cacao combo helps make it a potential intro to sour beer or perhaps wine drinkers who think they don’t like beer.
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