Category 12 Blueberry Black Currant Sour

Category 12 Blueberry Black Currant Sour Review

The first thing you have to deal with after grabbing a four-pack of this brew is figuring out if you’ve just picked up a mix pack. With two different colours of can labels, it feels like you’ve got a sour sampler on your hands.

Actually, you don’t. You’ve got the unique Blueberry Black Currant Sour from Category 12 Brewing.

We are fortunate to run across many fine BC brews each year. Some stand out, and this is one. It’s hard to avoid immediately falling in love with this offering from Saanichton’s purveyor of scientifically-calculated beverages.

A reasonably vigorous pour of this sour will net you a frothy, purplish-pink head. Under the foam is a brilliant, wine-like deep magenta liquid that draws your eye in. You can tell just from its appearance that this sour will have substantial body.

The frothy, purplish-pink head

Indeed it does, delivering a palate-coating punch of fruit like a super-tart fruit smoothie, offering signifcantly more mouthfeel than most sours.  But that’s just the start.

The aroma delivers berries, like rasperry and strawberry, along with white wine. The delicious flavours include blueberries, raspberries, cranberry and faint cinnamon notes, with plum in the finish (conveniently to match the beer’s colour). It’s sweet, but in a natural fruit way; it’s actually dry and vinous on the palate.

The can’s tasting notes describe this as an Imperial Sour, which would have been great to see in the beer’s actual title. Nevertheless, we can vouch that the beer’s 7.5% ABV is well hidden.

With this much thick, rich fruitiness in front of us, we (one of us) just had to cross the line and drizzle it on some vanilla ice cream.

You don’t have to do that. But if you can get yourself some of this beer, do it. This alone would cure anyone who thinks they “don’t like the tase of beer.”