“Blueberry wild ale made with locally sourced whole fresh blueberries and wild fermented sour ale, delightfully tart, hints of squashed ants, vanilla and ripe berries with gentle tannins. Suggested track Overdoz – Last Kiss.”

Glassware: Teku.

Appearance: Pours a very attractive candy red with a rapidly diminishing head. Almost no head left whatsoever and as we all know…no head = no lace.

Aroma: Very shy. We have to give the glass a really good swirl to coax out the slightly sweet and tart blueberry, pink lemonade, vanilla, subtle formic acid (now we understand why they mentioned “squashed ants” on the label ) and barnyard characters i.e hay/straw, musty funk and sweaty horse blanket. Not overly sour at all…bretty if anything.

Flavour: Again, lacking in the sour department but quite strong on the funky barnyard qualities; earthy, hay/straw, musty, a bit of blueberry, soft red wine tannins and a super subtle lick of vanilla. It keeps real earthy, mildly acidic and musty as it continues into the slightly less than impressive finish. Very short and lacking any real intensity.

Mouthfeel: Light on, mild-moderate acidity and a nice sparkling Co2. The 6.7% ABV was surprisingly well disguised though.

Overall: A rare strike out for this usually brilliant brewery. For us it seems to lack direction plus it’s quite muddled with no stand out flavour or structure. This is literally the first Parlay we’ve been indifferent to so that’s not a bad ratio! We’ll still be looking forward to the next release.