Peak Organic Pomegranate Wheat Ale

Peak Organic Brewing Company
Brewed at Shipyard Brewing Company
Style: Fruit Beer
Portland, Maine USA

Name: Pomegranate Wheat
Brewery: Peak Organic Brewing Co
Date: November 06, 2009
Mode: Bottle
Source: Hop City, Atlanta
Appearance: cloudy dark yellow, frothy white head, sudsy lace
Aroma: tart fruity aroma with a touch of sweetness
Flavor: dry wheat flavor, light fruity tartness, balancing bitterness, touch of fruity sweetness in the finish
Overall: good balance between the sweet and the tart
Aroma: 5/10; Appearance: 6/10; Flavor: 5/10; Palate: 6/10; Overall: 10/20
Rating: 2.6/5.0
Drinkability: 7/10
Score: ** /4

Bottle… Clear golden ale with orange highlights and a small, fizzy, white head. Nice retention. The aroma provides buttery sweetness and lightly toasted grains, but is a touch medicinal. Medium-bodied with a fatty mouthfeel and lively carbonation. The flavor is sweet, buttery and lightly fruity with modest, metallic bitterness. Sweet, buttery finish.

Tastes and smells like fake fruit injected into a basic run of the mill american wheat. Nothing special here.

Bottle from Whole Foods. Gold pour, big white head. Very carbonated. A big dose of floral hops hits followed by a good amount of wheat and some fruit and berries. Flavor is much more bitter than I expected. The hops, wheat and pomegranate make for an interesting combo. But I don’t want to drink one again.

Pours clear deep gold with towering rocky off white head. The aroma has mild sweet fruity notes and hints of dusty grainy wheat. The taste has a mild carbonation enhanced sour fruitiness that persists in the background as sweeter dark berry, sweet malts and grainy wheat well up then fade away into the finish.

The aroma does have a fruity thing going on and I guess there is pomegranate and acai but hard to pick out. It’s mostly just malt and a bit of diacetyl. The appearance is deep gold with an amber hue. The head is rather small. The flavor is like the aroma with a bitter finish. The palate is a bit thin but not too far off for the style. The finish is sweet and fruity. Overall I am not that crazy about it because of the bitterness but the main fruit flavors are nice in the finish but they fade fast.

12 ounce bottle - $1.99 at Hop City in Atlanta, Georgia. Appearance: Pours a clear, orange-golden body with a well-sized, lasting layer of white foam. Smell: Sweetish, butterscotch-scented malts with a fruity aroma sweeping in and smelling strongly of pomegranate (the IT fruit of yesterday) and acai berries (the IT fruit of today) with a minute hint of coriander. Taste: Malted wheat and barley with a sweet touch of butterscotch candy. Then in comes the fruity additions of lightly tart pomegranate and Oprah-approved acai berries, the latter of which has tasted vaguely reminiscent of blackberries on the (very) few times I’ve tried them. Touch of leafy coriander. Light, clean hop bitterness that along with the added coriander helps to provide some balance. Finishes semi-dry and lightly crisp with a lingering fruitiness. Mouthfeel: Medium-light body. Medium carbonation. Drinkability: It’s fruity, it’s wheaty, it’s sweetish and fine for the one bottle. I’m happy to be getting an extra dose of antioxidants to cancel out all those cell-damaging free radicals while also pickling my liver.

Sampled at Hyun’s bachelor party. Wheat aroma accented by a vague fruit note. Flavor was wheat, a bit of coriander, and a fruity sourness on the finish that was rather refreshing. Easy to drink, and one of the few beers where pomegranate actually seemed to come through a bit. Not as bad as I had feared.