Blackberry Donnelly
You ever have a show that you record every week in your DVR but never take the time to watch it? You kind of like the show but never take the time to watch it and the shows keep stacking up in your DVR. You always find a DVD or some show on live TV to watch instead of actually watching the show that is taking up 6 hours of space in your DVR. We've had several of those shows in the Vard mansion, “The Black Donnellys”, “Conviction” and the new “90210” come to mind. Usually the show gets cancelled before we actually watch them and we just delete all the episodes from the DVR.
Samuel Adams Blackberry Witbier is like “The Black Donnellys” of beers except it doesn't have any annoyances comparable to the kid on that show who failed to enunciate a single word in 8 episodes (I only watched 2, I'm just guessing that he never learned to enunciate for the other 6 episodes).
I kind of like a good fruit beer and am a giant fan of raspberry beers. I've taken a lot of guff over the years for my love of raspberry beers but I like them and I'm unapologetic. In general I'm not that big of a fan of blackberries, seeing them as a poor substitute for raspberries. But they're fine, certainly not the worst berry, I'm looking at you blue. So when I heard that Sam Adams had a blackberry witbier I was slightly intrigued.
It's a bit cloudy and looks like a good witbier when poured. It smells very strongly of blackberries which kind of overpowers the nose. I'm glad I chose my tall pilsner glass to drink it out of because I think it may have masked some of the overpoweriness of the blackberry smell. If I was presented with the full nose while drinking I think the blackberry may have been overpowering to the taste buds. But with the pilsner glass it actually became quite well balanced. What it lacked was any kind of sweetness, leaving it tasting a bit bland which I would blame on the blackberries which always seem to taste bland to me.
The Sam Adams Blackberry Witbier is certainly not the worst beer on shelves in KC. But it's far from the best. I suspect that it will meet the same fate as “Conviction”, a product from a great producer that never really found an audience because it just wasn't that great. Luckily it comes in a Brewmaster's variety 6 pack so you're only stuck with 2 of them if you don't likey.
