Weekly Beer Geek: Delilah DeWylde Berry Wheat

• Article by Luke G
• 
• |
• June 21, 2012
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• TAGS:
• Alcohol Reviews,
• Featured Articles,
• Drinkage

Delilah DeWylde Berry Wheat

Saugatuck Brewing Company

$2.19/Bottle

Grade: D+

The Beginning: It’s been hot as all hell the past couple of days, hot enough that I’m wasting my funds to run the air conditioning. How better to celebrate than with the sweet, cool crispness of a berry wheat? Plus I’m gearing up for an evening with a lovely lady, so what will calm the nerves better than beer? It’s got a girl on the label, which makes it relevant. Or makes me sound like an alcoholic looking for reasons, but I’ve been toeing that chalk line for a loooooong time.

The Brewer’s Pitch: Not much to pitch here. SBC is collaborating with a local rockabilly singer, Delilah DeWylde. Since all they bother to tell you about the beer is that it’s a “crisp and refreshing raspberry wheat,” which I GUESSED, I’ll tell you about DeWylde - she’s good! Classic rockabilly, old-school country with a little more vigor and a little less “my dog done ran off.” Plus, she’s got a cool, old-school, 20’s-pinup-girl aesthetic. She’s on YouTube, look her up.

The Beer: Delilah is a very pale yellow clear beer with two fingers of coarse pure white head. The nose is wheat, but with a more acidic sour note than the sweetness I usually associate with wheat beers. The first taste is very interesting. Rather than the soft smoothness that most wheat beers give, this is a tart pucker of grain and hops with barely-there raspberry floating below the surface. It ends with a wave of acid that sours the back of the palate, lingering into an aftertaste that blooms slowly into a berry-sweet afterglow.

The Breakdown: This had some interesting elements but they were vastly overpowered by the negatives. Fruity beers tend to be very sweet, and I hadn’t ever really questioned it. This one was heading for a crisper, cleaner, hoppier beer with the fruit to moderate the bite. However, it wasn’t up to the task. This was so bitter and so acidic that it left a bad taste in my mouth, literally. The end of the swallow, where the acid rolls like a fireball down the back of your tongue, is especially harsh and too irritating to be good. Then the ghost of what might have been shows up with an interesting hop-raspberry at the very tail end, but it’s not enough to save the rest of the taste.

The Bottom Line: Well hell, now I’ll have to have a GOOD beer to relax…