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Brew Crew: Cannery Brewing Blackberry Porter

Blackberry Porter
Cannery Brewing

With winter’s end in sight, I thought something dark and perhaps fruity would lead well into the warmer season. Just my luck, I spotted a bottle of Penticton-based Cannery Brewing’s Blackberry Porter at my local liquor store.

Despite all my hopes for subtle fruit dancing around rich stout flavours, the resulting taste leaves a lot to be desired. The beer pours in a viscous, syrupy way, with a wisp of a head coming to the top, then disappearing quickly.

Looking at this glass of dark brown brew sloshing around your glass in a manner more becoming of heavy cream than beer, you wouldn’t be blamed for saying it doesn’t look extremely appealing.

Once you begin to drink, things go even further downhill. Imagine spiking your Guinness with a few ounces of IHOP’s blueberry pancake syrup, and you’ll begin to have a sense of the misery that this beer brings to the drinker. It coats your throat like a glass of homogenized milk, it’s sticky and downright unpleasant. The saccharine berry clashes head-on with the notes of coffee and chocolate usually found in a porter.

Since it’s only available in 700mL bottles, you have to put up with this palate atrocity for a long time in order to not waste it. In reality though, it is probably better poured down the sink. The cloying fruit flavour leaves an unpleasant, sugary residue on the lips of the drinker, and this is one beer you where you don’t want the aftertaste to stick around.

More reminiscent of a cough syrup and lemon-lime soda in a foam cup, this might be the preferred brew of the experienced lean drinker. For their part, those who prefer things that actually taste good should probably leave this badly executed good idea alone.

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