Blueberries are a rare beer addition—the flavor is subtle, and often brewers end up making cloyingly sweet syrup with a blueberry aura. Pfriem went a whole different direction with its Blåbær blueberry lambic.
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The Hood River brewery has been churning out bottles of barrel-aged, Belgian-style beers this year—including one of my favorites, a cherry-rich, elegantly structured Oude Kriek. But the Blåbær veers way too hard toward dry and sour. The bottle touts the beer's tobacco and woodsy notes, but the dominant flavor is straight-up acid, with the beer's perilously low pH unchecked by depth of flavor that blueberries frankly don't have.
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It's a bit like the acid bath of certain de Garde beers—with a steep asking price of $12 for a 12-ounce bottle. Even Pfriem's rare missteps are interesting, but I wouldn't go back to this batch. Not recommended.
Willamette Week