Day 4: Yukon Brewing's 39 1/2 Foot Pole

(thought I'd switch to a lighter background so you can appreciate the color)

This is a black currant ale. I generally don't like "fruity" beer. That's maybe not quite accurate. I like them at first because they are different, and I like different. By the time I've had a couple, I generally never want to see that particular beer again, or at least for a long time. The exception to this is Samuel Adams' Cherry Wheat. I can't find any up here, and maybe that's a good thing. It's delicious.

Anyway, my main gripe with fruit flavoured beers is more about me than it is about the beer. One of the things I like most about beer is that it feels to me like the opposite of soda pop, and anything (like a fruit flavouring) that starts to approach soda pop chafes. While there are elements of sweetness that I enjoy in some beers, I don't like sweet + fruit.

This beer doesn't do that. It's a high enough ABV to have some real body and complexity, and the hops come through sharply. But rather than sweetness acting as the counterpoint to the hops, it is the fruit notes. Hops can add a lot of citrus flavour along with bitterness, and the currant seems to be blending with that citrus rather than adding a lot of sweetness. It's pretty interesting.

Not really my thing. But interesting. This seems to be a seasonal one-off for Yukon Brewing, and an outfit that can crank something like this out just for the hell of it has my attention. I think I'm only going to rate this particular beer at 3 more tankards, but I'm definitely going to check these guys out. I know I've seen their standard lager in a store or two, and on tap it apparently outsells the next most popular beer in the Yukon (Molson Canadian) at a ratio of over 2:1. Way to go, Whitehorse!