Brewed By: Miller Brewing Company (MillerCoors) in Milwaukee, Wisconsin
Purchased: 12oz bottle from a 12-pack bought at Jewel-Osco in Chicago, IL; 2015
Style/ABV: Fruit Beer/American Pale Wheat Ale, 5.6%
I like peaches. About MillerCoors aka Blue Moon:
Blue Moon was first brewed in 1995 at one of MillerCoors' R&D arms; in a sandlot, in Denver, Colorado, by Keith Villa. Keith Villa is an OG player these days. He's off judging beer, and talking about his PhD in brewing from the University of Brussels. There's a PhD for everything these days. Seriously though, it's Blue Moon. Read the Wiki.Aside from the kind of rapey name, the First Peach Ale is a beer brewed with caramel and wheat malts; Mittelfruh hops; and is described as a "classic Belgian sour brown ale with an American Pale Wheat Ale." This isn't sour at all, and has tenuous ties to anything that is sour, therefore we can only conclude that Kevin Villa is actually a hack and the Blue Moon website is run by penises. First peach, seriously?
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| Blue Moon First Peach Ale |
This pours into a light brown, reddish-body. It's filtered and not at all hazy, and screams nothing Belgian or sour. There is a nice finger of wheat-fueled, amber-hued head. The hues are endless with Blue Moon. I really don't care about taking cheap shots, but Keith Villa is apparently a BJCP judge or something. Seriously, a sour?
The aroma on this is super inviting. A lot of people are calling this "overly" peachy and "too much peach." And maybe after drinking a proper soured fruit beer that could be said to be true. This actually nails the peach thing, with pronounced peach juice, peach tea, peach currants, peach pie, and Lipton Iced Tea: Peach. The aroma briefly dabbles in the realm of Del Monte Fruit Cocktails, but beneath all the heavy peach sweetness are some hints of caramel malts, and some slight candy sugar Belgian spice. And that's all I really got for this.
The taste is a shell of the aroma, and reverts to this basic Blue Moon profile present in all their beers. Again, Keith Villa, you fucking hack. You will forever be known as the corporate shill that brews these regurgitated saccharine-sweet wheat beers with this awful extract malt profile. I'm actually quite partial to Belgian beer, so whenever Blue Moon slaps their Belgian stamp on a product it sort of triggers all sorts of angst. Again, I could not care less that Blue Moon is owned by people that have enough money to clone, kill, and cover up Keith Villa and his whacky creations. I should say this beer tastes like Peach Lipton Tea, peach juice, Del Monte Fruit Cocktail, and misguided caramel malts. There's that underlying saccharine sweetness that tastes like making out on the dance floor with strangers and bar bathroom perfume aromas.
Blue Moon has become the de facto "crafy" brand for MillerCoors, but the veil is thin. This might as well be Miller High Life with some peach juice thrown into the mix. In some respects, I like that, but I really think this beer would benefit from being slightly more hand job crafted. You just can't reproduce the complexities of those Belgian malts and those Belgian candy sugars in some Canadian sandlot. At any rate, this beer is too sweet for 5.6%. It's medium-bodied with blunted carb. The palate depth is full in all the wrong places, and this lacks complexity. It's not bad and at 5.6% I find it enjoyable...I obviously like something about this beer since I bought a 12-pack. Ummm...yeah.
Rating: Average (3.0/5.0 Untappd)
I'm feeling a Light Average on this. This has that great peach note up front, with some Lipton Tea in the mids....it's basically a glorified wine cooler until the back end drops those disjointed and artificial caramel malts. To add insult to injury, the 12-pack design for this beer is shitty and cheap cardboard. I picked up four 12-packs at the store, and each one broke at the handle resulting in a near-disaster. I feel like Blue Moon should make right by that and release the location of Keith Villa's clone factory.
Random Thought: A 12-pack of this shit costs $14.99. That's not terrible, but you'd be much better off grabbing a 4-pack of Festina Peche for around the same price or less. Even the Lindemans' "Faro" Pêche is FAR AND AWAY better than this. At least that beer has some malt complexity, albeit crashing against 8 pounds of added sugar.
On the Budweiser Super Bowl advertisement that has rustled so many jimmies...I just don't care. I really don't. I thought the ad was clever and effective. It hit its mark, and craft beer shouldn't be effected. This isn't a zero sum game anymore. Craft beer has thousands of brewers, and that's just in America. Craft beer is blowing up in other countries now, including Canada, Mexico, etc. Craft beer is also seeing a Renaissance in countries like England. So what the fuck is the big deal? So what if the commercial was emasculating or portrayed the craft beer crowd as neckbeard hipsters. Go stand in a line for any beer release...you'll be shocked to discover that it is mostly neckbeard hipsters. And many of them are as annoying if not more so than the pretentious douche pianos portrayed in the commercial.
