GETTIN’ ALL GIGGLY WITH MARIN BREWING’S “BLUEBEERY”

I’ve said it before, I’ve got no problem ordering up a fruit-flavored beer, though naturally I’m always ready for the letdown that follows at least 50% of the time. Best fruit beer going today? I’m glad you asked: Dogfish Head’s Aprihop. Worst fruit beer? Probably that SWEETWATER BLUE I had earlier in the year. Last weekend me & my son hopped a ferry for his first-ever boat ride, and took it from San Francisco to Larkspur, in Marin County. Needing some lunch – hey! Guess what happens to be at the Larkspur ferry terminus! MARIN BREWING! Wow, what a surprise? ;) (note: that was the first emoticon I’ve ever used in one of my blogs). So over a pizza at the brewery – which you may recall Hedonist Beer Jive just visited for the first time last month – I quaffed a BLUEBEERY ale, which I chose simply because I’d tried the other two choices that sounded interesting last time I was here, and to my disappointment, this place still only was serving the same five beers they had going last month.

BLUEBEERY was decent enough. It’s the sort of light-bodied pale ale that just about anyone can drink, and it’s a smart choice to have on tap for a social setting like this brewery, where many a gaggle of giggling girls was present. Nope, it’s not “girl beer”, but I could see how one might argue that it could be. It’s just a lighter, less-threatening beer, and it is probably only mildly interesting to the beer dork when on field studies as I was. The fruit was not “front-forward”, as they say, and was a satisfying backdrop to a lightly-hopped, zesty, easy-drinking ale. I barely felt any sort of effect from drinking it, which was just about right given my immense responsibilities shepherding a 4-year-old around his first brewery and first ferry. For its time and its place, it’s pretty all right. 6/10, available in 22-oz. bottles and at the pub itself.