The Session was created by the folks at Appellation Beer who thought it was high time for beer bloggers to write about the same topic on the same day. Determining the monthly topic is rotated among participating beer bloggers.

Greg Clow of Toronto, Canada, who writes Beer Beats & Bites cames up with this month’s session topic – fruit beers.

This is my first crack at The Session. Wish me well……..

I grew up in a small town in east-central Iowa.

My parents had just built a house in a new subdivision. There is no farming background in my family tree, but since they were now landowners they did what is required of them in a small town in east-central Iowa.

They tilled a garden in the backyard. They planted.

Trips to the Earl May store and mail-order packages from Henry Field were the norm. Over the years the garden got bigger.

And as the garden got bigger, I came to understand a universal truth about farms – the children provide the grunt labor.

Deep down I know my father wasn’t trying to compete with the multi-hundred acre corn field just beyond our lot line, but to my 10-year-old rather-be-out-playing mind and my skinned-from-kneeling-and-pulling-weeds knees, that small patch of dirt seemed like a thousand acre spread.

Off in one corner of the garden my mother planted strawberries. Now, my mother can kill a houseplant in no time flat (a genetic trait I inherited), but somehow these strawberries took on a life of their own. Pretty soon, the strawberries crept from a corner of the garden to a whole side of the garden. After a season or two we were giving away strawberries.

There is nothing like the flavor of a strawberry freshly plucked off the plant. It is heaven.

But picking and weeding strawberries is an entirely opposite direction.

So I have mixed feelings about strawberries.

Just like I have mixed feelings about fruit beers.

I want my beers to taste correctly. That is, a fruit flavored beer has to have a great beer flavor that can stand alone without the addition of fruit. Then, I want any fruit additions to compliment the beer – not to compete and not to over power. It sounds simple in theory, but I can only imaging how difficult that must be in practice.

Brau Brothers Brewing, a not even two-years-old startup brewer in Lucan, Minn., produces a strawberry wheat comes real close to hitting that balancing act.

The beer poured a light straw color with a nice yeast haze. It had very little head and a light wheat aroma with a faint backdrop of strawberry.

It had a lightly sour wheat flavor with a light touch of strawberry in the finish. The body was fairly light with the flavor opening up as the beer warmed. The strawberry component of the flavor stayed subdued.

As it warmed, a bit of hop spiciness appeared and the beer maintained its carbonation level.

I think would have better liked this beer if it had had a bigger wheat taste while still maintaining the same amount of strawberry flavor. As it is, the wheat flavor is a little too tame for me.

It’s a pleasant brew. It seems to be in the style of a light American wheat. I would like to see a bigger wheat flavor which I think would further subordinate the strawberries. That the beer was not packed with strawberry flavor – considering the lightness of the wheat – is a plus in my book.

This beer was purchased at the Jackson, Minn. municipal liquor store. A listing of their accounts that carry their beers is on the company’s website.

Stay tuned for reviews of the company’s other beers – including a very nice cream stout.

Cheers!

Tim Hynds

This entry was posted on Friday, August 3rd, 2007 at 8:17 am and is filed under Beer reviews, The Session. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.