Night Shift Brewing Bee Tea [Beer Review]

The first time I tried this beer was at the brewery. This is another one of those great instances where I knew very little about the beer before I tried it otherwise I might not have discovered it. At the core this is a Belgian style wheat ale, but from there things get interesting very quickly. The beer is infused with green tea and orange blossom honey which really make this beer a style unto itself. The tea is imparted by aging the beer on organic loose tea leaves and the result is pretty fanstastic. I'm a big tea drinker and you can actually taste the tea in the beer which gives it a really nice dry finish. 

The dry finish is really impressive given the honey addition which could have made this beer really sweet; at 7.1% abv you'd expect this beer to be sweet but it just isn't. And that's the thing, when you tell me 7.1% abv with lots of honey I assume I'll be having a really sweet beer, which isn't really my thing, and that's why I was so fortunate to try this beer without knowing any of that. Everything is balanced and just plain works. You get some nice green tea notes in the aroma up front, hints of the orange blossom honey and then some spiciness from the Belgian yeast. Nothing in this beer every overwhelms but rather works in a peculiar harmony. Every time I try this beer I feel like I taste something new and that's a very cool very rare thing. I opened a bottle for friends on the 4th of July and everyone liked it, but at the same time they each had something different to say about why. For some it was the tea, for some the subtle honey, others love the effervescence of it, especially on a very hot day. Reasons the real key is that there's something for almost everyone in this beer, and that why I really love it. 

Want to try more beer by Night Shift Brewing? Get tickets to Drink Craft Beer Summerfest July 13-14. 2012