Atlantic Bar Harbor Blueberry Ale

Brewed by Atlantic Brewing Company
Style: Fruit Beer
Bar Harbor, Maine USA

Pours a caramel color with an off-white head. Aroma is of blueberries, caramel, and citrus hops. Flavor is the same with a light, watery finish. Sweet to start off with, not much lingering flavor.

Solid ivory head above a shiny amber body. The nose is like smelling French toast covered with blueberries and hot maple syrup and dusted with powdered sugar and cinammon. Wow. Lush mouthfeel is nice conveyer for sugary blueberries in the body. Layering the fruit are sweet bready malts. This is really sweet throughout and with great use of the fruit. A really nice beer, but not something I could drink alot of.

Plenty of this to be sampled on my recent trip to the bar harbor area. Aroma of blueberries and the right amount of blueberry flavor so ot doesn't taste like the blue syrup at IHOP. However refreshing, I didn't care for it.

Bar Harbor Blueberry Ale, is the Atlantic Brewing Company’s most popular product, and it is a beer you could not have found outside of Maine until recently. ABC has expanded into other East Coast markets and their beers are welcome to anyone who loves great craft beer. The Blueberry Ale has a big following in Maine, and can be found both on draught, and in bottles, in a number of supermarkets, beer stores, beer bars, and restaurants. It is a tradition of mine to make the very first pint of beer I drink, at one of my favorite beer bars called The Great Lost Bear, a pint of Bar Harbor Blueberry Ale. It is a ritual I have performed for the last 14 years, and every time I drink this beer, it is like the first. I fell in love with this beer at first sip. Bar Harbor Blueberry Ale pours to a beautiful, bright, deep amber color, with a thick white head, and a good bit of carbonation. The nose on this beer is wonderful, and invites you in to take a sip. Sweet, and fragrant aromas of wild blueberries, marry with aromas of sweet malt, and slight citric hop aroma. The palate is firm, with lots of good biscuit, pale, tart wheat malt, and sweet malt flavors. This is coupled with a nice back drop of sweet/slightly sour fresh blueberry flavors. Bar Harbor Blueberry Ale finishes with some good malt flavors up front, then ends with a sweet and sour blueberry finish that slightly lingers. This is a fantastic beer that showcases wild Maine blueberry flavors and aromas from start to finish. It is delicious, and refreshing. Blueberry is the star in this beer, but this beer also has some great malt character as well. And this is the true beauty of this beer. It is not at all cloying, or too sweet and fruity. You know you are drinking a beer, not a sweet blueberry soda, a mistake some brewpubs/breweries make when doing a blueberry ale. The experience is akin to chewing on fresh wild Maine blueberries while drinking a very well done pale ale. The use of blueberry, malt, and hops in this beer is sublime, each play off each other, and are in perfect harmony. Bar Harbor Blueberry Ale is without a doubt the most impressive Blueberry Ale I have ever tasted. This beer is a natural with desert, and would go well with a nice big slice of warm wild Maine blueberry pie with a big scoop of vanilla ice cream.

12oz bottle, purchased at the brewery. Poured medium amber, a bit hazy, topped with an off-white head. Aroma of blueberry, malt, wheat, and perfume. Wheat and floral perfume flavor, with some blueberry, white pepper, earth and malt. Finish is somewhat astringent.

Dark gold, light brownish with too many bubbles and an ephemeral head. I can smell the blueberries before the glass even leaves the table- slightly sweet and also blueberry-bitter. Upon arriving at the nose, I’m getting little else, though some subtle almost bitter malt (perhaps a slightly older bottle?). Mouthfeel is as thin as can be, with too much CO2 to boot. The flavor is first somewhat borderline acrid/accerbic owing to the natural tartness of blueberries maybe? There’s some subtle sweet malt that lingers dovetailing with the presence of hops at the very end. This wasn’t as bad a beer as I ended up rating it, however, I can’t justify bumping up the overall any higher. My feel is this should be maybe a 2.8, but I just can’t find a reasonable way to get it there.

Pours a perfect amber, 1 inch head, goes to nothing fast enough. Lottle of bubbling. Blueberry aroma. Tastes like blueberry pancakes in the morning. What a stupendousbeer for breakfast. A wonderous substitute. Flavor is a little sweet (artificially?). Flat slightly bready finish.

Pours golden with a slight hint of copper amber. Small white head, recedes to nearly nothing with no lacing. Smells of blueberry. Taste is medium-thin bodied. Lots of sharp hops.