Buckbean Brewing's Orange Blossom Ale - Beer of the Week

by Joshua M. Bernstein, Posted Sep 14th 2009 @ 5:00PM

Photo: Joshua M. Bernstein

Joshua M. Bernstein, Gourmet.com's beer columnist, has written about brews, bars and booze for New York Magazine, Time Out New York, ForbesTraveler.com and The New York Times.

Too often, fruit-based beers are cloyingly sweet abominations, the beer world's equivalent of Bartles & James wine coolers. The fruits -- be they blueberries or apricots -- whip the malts into meek submission, creating little more than watery, carbonated beer smoothies.

So how do you tastefully infuse a beer with a fruit's delicious flavors? Dan Kahn had a serendipitous solution. Back in the 1990s, Kahn toiled at Riverside Brewing in Riverside, Calif., a SoCal city famous for its orange groves.

In honor of Riverside's Orange Blossom Festival, the town official contacted asked Kahn to brew a special beer. He plucked a few fistfuls of aromatic blossoms (an ingredient common to desserts and Middle-Eastern cuisine), then steeped them like tea and incorporated the concoction into a brew batch: "It wasn't like a fruit beer, where the fruit clashes with hops," Kahn says. "It added an extra characteristic that other beers just don't have."

The beer was so popular that he brought the recipe with him to Reno, Nev.'s Buckbean Brewing Company, which he co-founded in 2007 alongside Doug Booth. Thanks to brew master Kahn's creations, like the smooth, roasted Black Noddy Lager and the copper, nutty Adaven IPA, Buckbean has won a loyal following. Unsurprisingly, Buckbean's best seller is the Original Orange Blossom Ale, sold in pint cans.

Popping the tab releases a jasmine perfume, which continues to develop as you pour the orange-amber nectar into a glass. The ale drinks rich and creamy, with a smoothness owing to the Munich and caramel malts. A hint of hops brightens the beer, while the last sip leaves a Tropicana taste on your tongue.

Though we wish otherwise, it does not fulfill our daily vitamin C requirement.

Any fruit-style beers make you swoon? Spill it in the comments.

Filed Under: Drink Recipes
Tags: beer, BuckbeanBrewingCompany, fall, joshuabernstein, OrangeBlossomBeer, orangeblossomfestival, RiversideBrewing