Borderlands Prickly Pear Wheat

Brewed by Borderlands Brewing Company
Style: Wheat Ale
Tucson, Arizona USA

Serve in Shaker, Weizen

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The beer arrives from the tap with a deeply hazed, murky, pink-red stained, dark straw. The beer is topped by a pale, off-white colored head, that is maybe a ¼-finger in thickness. The aroma is earthy & somewhat yeasty smelling and there is also a tartness to the nose, as well as a soft, sort of floral fruitiness that leans towards a berry-like character. Cracker like pale malt aromatics add to the earthiness and there is an almost raw grain like note in the nose as well.

Lightly tart tasting, with a subtler, expressively floral fruitiness. The beer is fairly light bodied, but definitely has viscous slickness to it that is likely from prickly pear fruit. There is that characteristic, bitter, slightly vegetal character that is a signature of prickly pear, but thankfully it is quite subtle here. As the beer warms up the tartness becomes more apparent. The prickly pear contributes flavors reminiscent of pomegranate, tart-not-quite-green-slightly-ripe berries and even a touch of watermelon like flavors. There is a touch of cracker like grain character towards the finish that shows that there is indeed some base beer character here; it definitely has some wheat character to it.

Quite a bit tastier than I was expecting, I really like that this misses the usual pitfalls made when brewing with prickly pear. As one would expect from this type of beer, it is fairly simplistic in its focus on the prickly pear notes, but it keeps this subtle enough that it works fairly well. If this was brewed with a Saison yeast I would likely be quite happy to drink a lot of this.

On tap at the brewery. Pours hazy orange with a medium white head. This was one of the first batches and I was told the amount of hops used was more than future batches would be. Aroma was huge cascade and citrus notes. Flavor was thin grass and cracked wheat with big juicy citrus notes and thin prickly pear. The hops were huge in this beer, almost bordering ipa.