Blue Hills Brewery is a small but intriguing craft brewery on the South Shore, located in Canton, Massachusetts. What they lack in size, they make up for in charm, as well as a confident and powerful lineup of beers, each with its own identity, evident not only to taste buds and olfactory senses but to the eyes as well. In fact one magnetic draw is the artwork on the bombers, particularly when they’re on display near on another on the shelf. The artwork is unique to each brew, but stylistically they’re similar enough to relate to one another, so that the brewery itself has a particular visual identity, individualized by each unique brew.
Once attracted to the bottles visually, the reasonable price is what keeps one intrigued. A 22oz bottle is available in the ball park of $3.00 at most package stores in which it is sold, and it’s usually never more than $5.00 per bottle (excepting a few of their premium beers).
According to their website, they offer an Extra Pale Ale, an India Pale Ale, Red Baron Ale, Imperial Red IPA, Black Hops Ale, Wampatuck Wheat, and Watermelon Wampatuck Wheat. They are also purportedly going to release at least one, but possibly two autumn seasonals.
For someone interested in trying one of these beers, there are three that can safely be recommended, of varying styles suitable to a small range of palates. The Blue Hills India Pale Ale is available in a six-pack as well as a bomber, and is also sold in various bars locally. Off the bat, one won’t be astounded by the color, clarity, head, or any visual aspect of the beer. You’ve purchased an India Pale Ale, and that’s what you appear to have a glass of. But upon sampling the beer, you come to discover that where it stands out from a lot of microbrewed India Pale Ale is that it doesn’t attempt to assault the palate with hops, but rather is made with a more traditional IPA in mind. There is a distinct hop bitterness that one comes to expect stylistically, with a bit more of a citrusy tang than a piney flavor, although the latter is certainly present as well. The hops, though present, are somewhat subdued by the malt-richness, which does a fantastic job of acting as a foil to the hops, making this beer become very much drinkable despite its 6.6% ABV and high-hop content.
Blue Hills Brewery’s Black Hops ale is another hoppy beer that offers increased drinkabililty compared to a lot of its peers. It’s something reminiscent of a traditional German Schwarzbier, with one major underlying difference in that it is in fact top-fermenting Ale rather than a bottom-fermenting lager. It is rich and fairly opaque, near-black with some amber, visually as much of a hybrid as it is stylistically. Again, despite having a large ABV of 6.75%, the beer is dangerously quaffable. This is good ale for someone more used to a lager, who has possibly ventured into the realm of an accessible Schwarzbier-styled beer (like Sam Adams Black Lager). It’s got a lot of the characteristics of those beers, with a lot more hop flavor presented in a way that makes it more accessible to non-ale drinkers.
Lastly, we’ve got the Watermelon Wampatuck Wheat. Watermelon beers are certainly one of the more tricky beers to pull of successfully. At the surface, we’ve got a fruit beer, which already garners a social stigma amongst certain cliques of beer drinkers. We’ve also got a beer style that’s been attempted a number of times, including by Opa Opa Brewery and 21st Amendment, which garnered mediocre reception. It’s possible that these beers haven’t quite accomplished what needed to be accomplished because they feel like watermelon first, beer second. What distinguishes Blue Hills Watermelon Wheat is that an initial impression is that one is drinking a wheat beer, with the presence of watermelon. Certainly the gimmick is still there, but it’s executed more expertly in that one is enjoying a very decent wheat beer, with a strong sub-flavor of Watermelon. Very drinkable in the sense that the watermelon imparts a very non-threatening flavor to folks who don’t typically drink craft, but not in such a way that one feels like they’re imbibing Fruit Stripe gum in liquid form.
Their beers are available all over the state, and you can learn more about the brewery and the availability of their beers by checking out www.bluehillsbrewery.com. The three featured Blue Hills beers in this article and more will also be sampled at an Oktoberfest Tasting at Luke’s Super Liquors in West Yarmouth on Saturday, October 9th, 2010, from 2:00 PM – 5:00 PM.
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