Posted by Greg Clow in beer, beverages on July 22, 2008 at 4:43 pm
While it's no longer the top of the heap in the category of so-called "superfruits", having been usurped in recent years by more exotic newcomers like açaí and mangosteen, the pomegranate still remains a popular choice for people who think that eating food with antioxidants will help them live to 150. Never mind that most people get their pomegranate fix in the form of drinks that are often blended with other fruit juices or sweetened with sugar and other artificial flavours - if it says "pomegranate" on the package, then it'll sell like hotcakes (with maple-pomegranate syrup!).
One market that is somewhat immune to "functional food" trends is the beer industry (light/lite beer aside, of course). Low-carb beer made a small blip in the market a couple of years ago, and organic and gluten-free beers each have a small slice of the pie. But generally, people don't drink beer to get healthy. Quite the opposite, in fact.
Still, that hasn't stopped a small number of brave brewers to create beers that use pomegranate as an ingredient. According to ratebeer.com, there are 18 beers with "pomegranate" in their name, with two of them coming from Ontario breweries. One of them is a Pomegranate Cream cask ale whipped up as a one-off by Cameron's Brewery in Oakville for a couple of special events earlier this year, so it was more a novelty than an attempt to tap the pom-obsessed market.
The other, however, has been given much wider distribution. Pomegranate Wheat from Toronto's Amsterdam Brewery was debuted at C'est What's annual Spring Festival of Small Breweries back in May, and more recently appeared at the LCBO in distinctive single bottles with full colour plastic sleeves (LCBO 96669, $2.75/500 ml) similar to the brewery's Nut Brown, Blonde and KLB Raspberry Wheat brands. And I suspect it's drinkers of the latter that will be the most likely to pick up and enjoy this beer.
It has a golden-amber colour with a snow white head and a very clear body, so the base beer is likely a North American style (i.e. filtered) wheat beer rather than a more traditional German hefeweizen. When I first sampled it at C'est What, I found a lot of pomegranate on the nose, but more like pomegranate candy than the real thing. In the bottled version, the aroma has a more generic fruit/berry candy character, with a faint maltiness in the background. The body is highly carbonated at first, almost annoyingly so, but as it warms and the bubbles clear out, it develops a sticky and somewhat cloying edge. The flavour, like the aroma, is quite candyish - or more accurately, it tastes of fruit gum, like Juicy Fruit with additional notes of raspberry and pomegranate.
To be honest, this beer just isn't my sort of thing. Much like the KLB Raspberry Wheat, the flavour profile is too sweet for my taste, and comes across as artificial tasting even though they (presumably) use natural extracts for the fruit flavouring. In fact, I wouldn't be surprised if the Pomegranate Wheat is just the KLB Raspberry with some extra flavouring thrown in.
In this case, though, I doubt that my opinion meshes very well with the general public. The continuing success of alcopops and uber-sweet fruit beers proves that lots of people love the sugary stuff. And having the "Pomegranate" name on the label will certainly be a big selling point, at least until some other brewery comes out with the world's first Açaí Ale.
Like an off-dry riesling, sweet fruit beers get a bad rap when they are expected to perform like a porter or an ipa. Drunk alongside a fruit-based dessert (and perhaps in smaller quantities than a full pint) they can be a tasty, refreshing & unusual treat and not just an alco-pop replacement!
Sorry purplelips - I've had sweet fruit beers paired with fruit desserts as you suggest; they're still nasty to me.
First thought was that i have to try this beer, until i read the part that it tasted more like sweet pom candy than the actual fruit, plus the carbonation, well in that case i might as well just stick to a cooler like pomtini...
purplelips - I agree that in some contexts, sweeter fruit beers work nicely. There are some I've tried that I quite liked.
But it's not the sweetness that's my main complaint about this beer, it's that the flavour profile is too candyish. I prefer fruit beers that have flavours that seem more natural.
Tried this last night. I'm going to have to say I fully agree with Greg. This beer is not too sweet... it's the fruit flavour's artificial-like smell and taste that causes it to lose points.