I’m not afraid to admit that I’m a sucker for marketing. I buy into trends and fancy labels like there’s no tomorrow, so when I saw an organic beer offering at the store, I had to buy it.

In fact, there’s an entire brewery dedicated to organic beers. Peak Organic Brewing Company has several varieties of pseudo-healthy beers, but I chose to double up on my trendiness and try their Pomegranate Wheat Ale.

The Pomegranate Wheat Ale’s label boasts flavors of organic pomegranate juice (of course), the über trendy açaí berry and its hipster cousin, coriander. I can’t remember ever having tasted an organic beer before, and I’ve never tried a pomegranate beer, so I was in for a round of firsts with this tasting.

I poured the Pomegranate Wheat Ale into a tall pint glass and was a bit taken aback by the whole experience. The color was strikingly orange, but the most notable part of the pour was the beer’s strong aroma.

Now, I’m not going to say that the Pomegranate Wheat Ale smelled like urine, but I will say that I frantically read the label trying to find out whether the Peak Organic Brewing Company uses preservatives in their beers or if it may have prematurely spoiled.

The label offered no help here, so despite my reservations about the beer’s aroma, I bucked up and took my first sip. Like my experience pouring the beer into the pint glass, I had mixed reactions to my first taste of the Pomegranate Wheat Ale.

The initial taste was not pleasant. At first the beer tasted how it smelled — not great — but that subsided pretty quickly, and I was able to taste hints of pomegranate and açaí. Both were enjoyable.

I won’t pretend that I know what coriander tastes like, so I’ll just have to take Peak Organic’s word that it was in there somewhere. Surprisingly, the beer started tasting better as I continued drinking it, and by the end of the glass I was enjoying every sip from start to finish.

The biggest lesson I learned from Peak Organic’s Pomegranate Wheat Ale is that sometimes products that are trendy and well-marketed are just that — and not superior to their less hip counterparts.

Published on March 6, 2014 at 1:41 am

Contact Tom: tsharkey@syr.edu