Award

Monday, September 24, 2012

Blue Moon Vintage Blonde Ale 2012


I like Blue Moon, they brew good beers and I knew that they discontinued their Grand Cru not long ago. I was in my local grocery store and I saw this big 25.5 fl oz or 1 pint 1.9 oz bottle of Blue Moon and wondered what it was. I took one of course. Only comes in this size. This Vintage Blonde 8.5% ABV, won the gold metal at the 2010 Great American  Beer Festival. This beer is crafted with Chardonnay grape juice and all-wheat grain. This is also kind of celler-aged, but I'm not sure for how long. Blue Moon says with this you can enjoy this now or you can set it aside for the right moment. I've had this sitting for about three weeks or so. I saved it when my brothers family came in. The appearance on this Blue Moon looks almost like some of the Blue Moons beers, deep orange almost dark gold, with a finger of white head that rather quickly and had tiny bubbles with in the head. Not a whole lot of light getting through the glass, but that is normal on most wheat beers. Not much lacing to it, but there was some to little. There was a huge sweet grape scent with a wine like grape juice aroma. Very powerful scent on this ale. Wow big huge scents and aromas! I also found that wine Chardonnay scent there as well under that all those grape aromas. This had a sweet grape wine scent over all. Taste on this was not what I was expecting, but not bad. First there is a big sweet grape like taste, almost like you're eating fresh sweet grape. Then you get that nice sweet grape juice, but it has more of a wine like taste. You do get a tiny bit of a nice wheat flavor that's surronds all grape taste but nothing like a German wheat beer. The finish on this wasn't dry like some Chardonnays can be, but it was crisp sweet and refreshing. Overall I would give this a C+, just not what I was expecting from this. I was thinking it would be more like a Belgian golden strong ale with a  little sweetness, but not a bad beer, tasty stuff from this Blue Moon. It reminded me of a saison a little bit. I also thought that this had a little more hype to this then it had taste. The taste didn't match the hype with this. This seems like a more of a special brew and it was good but not wow knock my socks off kind of good. It did say limited edition on the bottle neck, but that was just because they don't brew a whole lot of this, but didn't taste as special as some limited editions brews I've had. It was good as I'd hoped, still a C+ from me. Yes I recommend this and to cellar this. So pick up two, one to have now and one to age for a little while. Cheers! Please enjoy responsibly!    

No comments:

Post a Comment