Last year marked a new tradition for this beer geek - a brand new Manitoban beer festival popped up right in the heart of Riding Mountain National Park (Wasagaming) at the Danceland hall put on by the Lakehouse Hotel right across the street. The beer festival was an amazing way to not only discover a part of Western Manitoba that I've only been to less than a handful times in my life.
This year's edition of the Clear Lake Beer Festival had a solid turnout of breweries/beverage makers from Western Manitoba, Winnipeg and Winkler.
Farmery came out with a new line of malt-based iced teas called Auntie Bea's Hard Brewed Teas. They've already had a line of hard iced teas and lemonades in the past but this time around they collaborated with BeeMaid Honey to give the new products a nice kick of additional sweetness. As someone who was a devout Twisted Tea (and more recently PBR Groovy Lemon) fan, I was saddened when both brands opted out of doing malt-based recipes in favour of vodka as I found working with malt gave the beer a bit more of a complexity to it.. and I'm someone old enough to have sampled Zima at one point.. that was a really good example on how someone can manipulate malt to the point you have a nice beverage/cooler but not taste like a beer.
Auntie Bea's comes in three varieties: Lemon Tea, Peach, and Blackberry. Out of the three the Blackberry was by far my favourite so that's what I'll sample today.
Appearance: Pours dark brown with a deep cherry-red hue to it, almost like a Dr Pepper, or if right against the sun it's more of a honey-amber in appearance. The Hard Tea is a tad fizzy as it's being poured and there's a bit of bubbles on top but they diminish to almost no bubbles at all on top except a few very tiny bubbles here and there. No noticeable bubbles in the body.
Aroma: Very jam-forward. Reminds me of raspberry or strawberry jam right from the beginning. A few seconds later I get the notes of the blackberry fruit, giving a lot of fruitiness, an and ever so slight hint of tartness to it. I definitely get notes of honey for added sweetness. Slight nose of toasted malt but it's pretty much subdued.
Taste: The Blackberry Hard Tea is very sweet but not sickly sweet - it's got a good ratio of honey sweetness and fruitiness from the blackberries. This time around I got more of the tartness from the blackberries than I did in the aroma. One thing I'm wanting more of is the actual tea. I do get a bit of an herbal/slightly bitterness from the tea way at the back but I want just a bit more of a punch of tea in there.
Overall Thoughts: Fruity blackberry cooler with a bit of a jammy vibe to it, good deal of honey and a hint of herbal/bitterness from the tea. I drank a lot of their Iced Tea Ale in the baby blue cans way back in the day and I'm glad to see them work on the genre of product, tweaking it bit by bit to get it to here - it's definitely a lot smoother and the malt isn't clashing with the other flavours. If I have time I'll try to review the Lemon and Peach varieties one of these days. 4% ABV
Auntie Bea's is also available in a non-hard non-alcoholic format which I've already seen at local grocery stores here such as Safeway/Sobeys and CO-OP.
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