Cannery Blackberry Porter

Brewed by Cannery Brewing Company
Style: Fruit Beer
Penticton, Canada

75 cl bottle, Fargo, ND, USA via Winnipeg. Deep brown, almost purple tinged colour. Blackberry aroma (surprise) with some mixed in dough and faint coffee. Mellow flavor, sharp berry finish.

Attractive color and head, but little aroma. Blackberry smell only seems to be powered by the carbonation. Taste is a surprise, deep chocolaty body, slightly sweet, very smooth, and no bitter aftertaste. Blackberries hardly come through at all. Hardly worth calling this a fruit beer.

Date: September 09, 2009
Mode: Bottle
Source: City Center Liquor, Surry, BC
Appearance: opaque dark brown, frothy tan head, bits of drippy lace
Aroma: berry aroma as soon as you open the bottle, after pouring a bit of chocolate shows up in addition to the sweet berry
Flavor: rich chocolate flavor, balancing berry sweetness, touch of dark chocolate bitterness
Overall: berry is pretty well balanced with the chocolate
Aroma: 6/10; Appearance: 7/10; Flavor: 6/10; Palate: 6/10; Overall: 13/20
Rating: 3.2/5.0
Drinkability: 7/10
Score: **+ /4

650mL bottle - pours almost pure black with an off-white head. Blackberries are dominant. Smooth porter with a dry finish, but a little thin. Good porter, nonetheless.

Pours almost black with a very subtle purple hue when held up to the light. Has a thick beige head. Strong aroma of blackberry, and muffin. Very malty with a strong berry fla vour mid palate. A bit of a dry sour finish, Very fruity and very full bodied. Not as sweet as you would think it is actually very bitter in the finish. A very interesting porter. I think that the berry flavour is a little too prononced, However, the beer still retains a very genuine malty characteristic. Pretty good.

Bottle. Nice and dark with thick lasting head. Aroma of blackberries. Taste is mostly porter. Very smooth. Because of the fruit tannins, it is hard to tell where the hops come in, since the blackberry tannins contribute to the slightly bitter, dry finish. Fairly well balanced, I did not sense any real disconnect between the blackberry and the porter. body was medium and smooth. For fun , I mixed the last 100ml with an equal amount of red wine (S. African Merlot), and it was pretty good!

Bottled sample. Ruby black in colour with medium carbonation. Aromas of strong blackberry, old-school grape bubblegum, and some subtle chocolate-like roasted malt. More porter qualities come through early in the mouth, with nice chocolate, char, and wet slate notes. A bit of sweet caramel comes through mid-sip before the blackberry returns. The finish is dry and slightly chalky. Fruitier than expected, but I like how the porter and blackberry works together. Seems more like a successful homebrew experiment, rather than a beer that a pro brewer would feature regularly. Still, kudos to Cannery for taking this kind of risk. A very good brew overall.