Blueberries, Beer, and Bruins

I was recently invited to come along to a Boston Bruins game with my good friend Mags. She scored some sweet tickets fo' free on Craigslist and when asked to go - I heart Mags, so of course I went!! I took the train down and met her for dinner at Boston Beer Works, a local restaurant chain that brews 16 kinds of beer at their restaurants in Boston (2), Salem, and Lowell.

It was a triumvirate of excitement: a girls' night out with Mags, my first Bruins game, and trying out a "famous" new restaurant. Holy crap - my head essplode.

First of all - I have to say that hanging out with Mags is one of the most fun things ever. It's so nice to hang out, laugh about life, and just have a good time. It was great to see one of the hometown teams win a game on home turf (7-4, it was a REALLY good game).

But the point of this post is not to get into the inside jokes that Mags and I have or give you a blow-by-blow of the game. It's to tell you about the obligatory sports night beer that I partook in at Boston Beer Works.

First, let me show you:



That, my friends, is a Bunker Hill Blueberry Ale. The little balls - for those that have not had a blueberry beer at a place that does this - are wild Maine blueberries.

I'm not much of a beer fan. There are some that I don't mind, but usually for a beer to really grab my attention it has to have some sort of character to it - a flavor if you will. There are a couple of Dogfish Head IPAs that do this and my favorite bottled beer is the Harpoon UFO Raspberry Hefeweizen. I recently had a sip of a Pumpkin Spice ale that I thought was just great. This beer ranked up with some of my favorites with absolute certainty.

The beer itself was (as you can see) a lighter ale. It had a crisp taste with not a lot of bitterness as it went down. There was the definition of a light beer, but with the sweet hint of blueberries as it made its way across your tongue. It was enjoyable and didn't feel that filling on the stomach - which is good, because a lot of beers can feel like you ate 3 dinner rolls by the time you finish them. Without a doubt, this was one of the best beers I've had while I've been out to dinner someplace.

The neatest part though were the little blueberries. As I drank the beer, every so often one or two of the little guys would make its way into my mouth and add a wee bit of blueberry "pop" to the taste of the beer. At the end of the beer, I had 5 or 6 blueberries left at the bottom of the glass which I dug out with my fork to eat. It was the perfect ending to the beverage - instead of beer that had a slight taste of blueberry, I had a mouth full of blueberry that had a slight taste of beer. As we were having our meal, the blue globes of goodness kept rising and falling up and down the brew as kind of a "blueberry beer lava lamp" (as Mags put it).

Oh... the food at the restaurant was quite tasty too. But with a name like Boston Beer Works, the beer had to live be at least decent and it most certainly was.