The same afternoon that we picked up the Kitten Mittons beer, I also selected a 341 ml bottle of St-Ambroise Apricot Wheat Ale, from McAuslan Brewing in Montreal, Quebec. It has been a fair number of years since I have had any Canadian beers, and back then, my taste in beer was less refined. So, I wasn’t sure what to expect, but the idea of a fruit wheat beer was intriguing.
I drank it the other night, after a long day at work. On the nose, it smells of apricot. And I don’t just mean it smelled like a nondescript stone fruit, where it could have been peach, nectarine, or even something else, but this was distinctly apricot. It has very little carbonation or head (some of this was because I drank it from the bottle), but I even wondered if it had gone flat. I certainly didn’t see anything near the head that it pictured below (from McAuslan’s website).
On the palate it tastes like a wheat beer with an over-layering of apricot, almost like there was apricot juice poured right in. It wasn’t too sweet though – it still definitely tasted like beer. It didn’t blow me away, but it was good – it would be a good beer for a hot, summer night on the deck. Too bad that it is still several months before it will be hot enough for that.
So it would go well with a nice BBQ then.
I think it would go really well with some spicy BBQ – the apricot would cut the heat of the sauce. Good idea!