Shipyard Smashed Blueberry

Happy International Beer Day everyone!  Yes, apparently August 5th is International Beer Day.  I figured it made sense for me to post a review of a very special, unique beer to mark the beginning of this momentous 24 hour occasion.  Cheers!

After hearing several mentions of this beer, I finally decided to pick up a bottle of Smashed Blueberry from Shipyard Brewing (Portland, ME).  Like many of my recent beer purchases, I found this in the Beer Cave at The Drinkery Shop in Londonderry, NH for $9 for a 22oz. bottle.  The bottle looked promising enough, all blue, like a blueberry.  Read the description on the bottle before buying?  Of course not, why would I do that?  This is just a blueberry beer...what's not to understand?

Prepare to have your definition of "just a blueberry beer" blown straight out of the water.  I decided to read the description on the bottle as I was putting it into the fridge.  "Hybrid between a Porter and a Scotch Ale?"  "Notes of coffee and chocolate?"  "Aroma of blueberries."  The last one makes sense, but the first two...what the?  I'm sure you've all had blueberry beer before, the crisp, fruity ale that may even have some blueberries happily dancing up and down in the glass.  While often rather tasty, that kind of beer, this is not.  This is a 9% a.b.v. monster of a beer!

As you can see from the picture, this is an extremely dark, porter-like beer with a tasty looking tan head.  The head fairly rapidly drops down to just a very thin layer, but that layer seems to stick around forever (or at least as long as it's taking to drink the beer).  Does this smell like a sickly sweet, blueberry bomb of a beer?  Not at all.  What you do smell is a hint of blueberry mixed in with the nice malty aroma of a good dark beer.  I actually question whether I'd identify this as a blueberry beer just by smell if I hadn't seen the bottle.  Editor's note: I do have allergies though, so possibly ignore anything I'm saying.

OK, let's get to the meat of this thing...beer of this thing...whatever.  This is an immensely flavorful beer!  When you first taste it, it tastes like a good quality porter...dark and flavorful with bits of coffee and chocolate passing over your now happy taste buds.  The Scotch Ale part of Shipyard's description is less obvious.  Scotch Ales are a type of strong pale ale...slightly hopped, somewhat higher a.b.v and full bodied.  A lot of that gets lots in the porter, which is itself a flavorful, lightly hopped dark ale, but there is a nice balanced hoppiness to this beer and the 9% a.b.v. doesn't hurt matters either.  The alcohol isn't overpowering, but believe me, you will start to feel it as you work your way through the bottle.

As I made my way through this beer, I marveled at the full, balanced, rich flavors.  I was thoroughly enjoying myself.  One thing kept going through my head though...where are the blueberries?  This isn't like a typical blueberry beer where the first sip slaps you in the face with blueberry flavor.  But, shouldn't it be here somewhere?  Then something interesting happened.  I stopped drinking to start typing this and then it hit.  I didn't have a giant aftertaste of beer in my mouth, I had a pleasant, slight aftertaste of blueberries!  Where did it come from?  Really, it is quite interesting.  Like a lot of flavors in beer (and wine and food in general), I think the blueberries are adding to the richness of this beer.  They are just taking a back seat to the other stronger flavors here.  In the end though, they make themselves known, if only subtly. 

I must say, I'm really impressed with Shipyard Smashed Blueberry.  It's not at all what I expected, and I'm happy about that.  I didn't want "just" another blueberry beer, and I certainly didn't get it!  For those who don't like fruit beers, this will change your mind (at least for this one beer).  The blueberries in here complement the beer, they don't overpower it.  You absolutely won't be disappointed.  Shipyard Smashed Blueberry definitely gets an A in my book!