Speciality Drinks: Berry Champagne Ale

This week, Heartland Brewery introduced another speciality beer to their New York locations. Like their well known apricot, pumpkin and holiday ales, this one fits the season--it is light, fruity (we tasted pomegranate, pear and ginger on top of the red raspberry puree the beer is made with, not unlike Lambic), and very, very easy to drink a bit of the bubbly implied by it's name. The beer is served in a glass more well suited to champers than pilsner, too, with art by Daily Candy illustrator Suien Rim. Kelly Taylor, the (male) brewmaster who has been perfecting the ales in the company's Fort Greene brewery for eight years hopes that the ale appeals to women who drinks cocktails, not beer. And that's where we soured on the ale (we were, notably, going to forgive the enormous cockroach that landed onto our Moleskine notebook at the Union Square location). See, we don't think we can speak for all women or even all women who are lushes but as one female who drinks, this writer is a little offended that the underlying meaning here is that women don't know enough--or worse, are scared-- to try beer for themselves and need fruity tastes and an picture of fishnetted and stilettoed legs to know it's for them. We'd drink the Berry Champagne Ale if our friends wanted to have lunch at Heartland Brewery, it tastes like breakfast in summer, especially if we're too hungover to remember that we can think for ourselves.

Berry Champagne Ale is available at all the Heartland Brewery locations (Times Square, Union Square, South Street Seaport and Radio City).