Wild Blue Blueberry Lager

You know, people are going to start thinking I’m picking on Anheuser-Busch. But I assure, you I’m not. They do make a few beers I really enjoy, like Jack’s Pumpkin Spice , but for the most part, even when they try to make a craft beer (and in that category I certainly do not include the abortion known as Budweiser Chelada ), they seem to have hard time getting it right. Case in point: Wild Blue Blueberry Lager.

Now, I absolutely love Blueberry beers, and I take a lot of flak for that at times from the anti-fruit beer contingent of the beer geek community. But hey, I think blueberries and beer go wonderfully well together, as long as the final product still tastes like beer at the end of the day. Sadly enough, Wild Blue doesn’t.

When you see the stuff in the store, you might not even know that this is an Anheuser-Busch product, but it is. The bottle attributes it to the “Blue Dawg Brewing Company” of Baldwinsville, New York. A little research will tell you that Anheuser-Busch has one of it’s brewery in that same city, and this is where Wild Blue is made.

Wild Blue Blueberry Lager pours to a dark purplish color with an equally purplish and rather fizzy, if somewhat short-lived, head formation. The nose is full of sweet blueberry flavor mixed with another, off-putting aroma that I sometimes find in cheap, high alcohol lagers, otherwise known as malt liquors.

There’s lots of blueberry in the palate, too: maybe a little too much. That’s because the beer is so fruity that is really loses any beer quality it might have otherwise had, and takes on almost soda-pop, wine-cooler like character. Indeed, Wild Blue is cloyingly sweet, and finishes that way, too. Alcohol content is higher than most beers at 8% by volume, but the extra alcohol doesn’t really help dry this one out.

With all that said, I could easily drink Wild Blue if it was put before me, and loving Blueberry beers as I do, even enjoy it in small doses, I think. But the lack of biscuity malt to remind me I’m drinking a beer would always be present in my mind, and the sweetness would make it impossible for me to drink more than one. That might make it a hit with some of the ladies, however. Anyway you slice it, it’s pricey at $9.99 a six-pack at Total Wine.



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