It’s no one’s favorite time: a beer review!
Even if you’re someone who prefers junk food reviews to beer reviews (aka all of you), this is the one beer review that I’d encourage you to read anyway. The regular Blue Moon wheat ale is pretty inoffensive, and the specialty flavors can appeal to even the most seasoned beer haters. Blue Moon Cinnamon Horchata, Blue Moon Vanilla Wheat, and Blue Moon First Peach Ale are all available in one special 12-pack. The pack comes with a few of the traditional Blue Moon’s as well, but I’m not reviewing those because they’re boring.
Blue Moon Vanilla Wheat is up first. I tasted this at Great American Beer Fest and gave it a really high rating, but I admit that my review of that festival was less than scientific. I had no idea if that rating was accurate, or if I just happened to eat a nacho at Blue Moon’s beer tent and thus became happy with everything around me. Luckily, though, it turns out I still agree with my drunk self: this beer is awesome. It’s definitely not going to win any “Most Exciting” beer awards, but it’s light and very drinkable. It reminds me of a vanilla soda: kinda fizzy, not very beer-y, yum yum all around. It also doesn’t taste like artificial at all, which is an impressive accomplishment for any vanilla beer.
Our next contender is Blue Moon Cinnamon Horchata. For those poor souls who don’t know, horchata is a Mexican drink that is basically heaven. It’s milk mixed with cinnamon, vanilla, and sugar. Sometimes it has rice at the bottom, which I admit is kind of strange, but if you imagine it like a shot of rice pudding then it’s….still pretty terrible I guess. Anyway, this beer poured a very light color, and I didn’t have much hope for it to really pull off the true horchata flavors. I WAS SO WRONG. I have no idea how they did it, but this beer is creamy to the max. Creamy, cinnamony, milky, and sugary. It tastes so much like horchata that it’s uncanny. I almost think it would benefit to drink it out of a dark cup, because mentally I couldn’t get over how it looked like Bud Light but tasted like Latin America.
Lastly, we have Blue Moon First Peach Ale. I’m not generally a huge fan of fruit beers because they mostly taste like cough syrup (and not the delicious kind of cough syrup, either). While this beer doesn’t quite escape the cough syrup curse, it’s not bad. The peach flavor comes through powerfully, but fades away pretty quickly. It’s sweet and peachy, but like most peach-flavored things, it’s not particularly exciting. My sister, on the other hand, absolutely flipped her shit over this beer. She said it tastes like peach iced tea and she wants to only buy this beer for the rest of her life. BUT she didn’t like Cinnamon Horchata, so I don’t know what to think about any of her opinions. If you like fruit beers, you’ll definitely like this. If you don’t like fruit beers, you probably won’t be converted. If you’re my sister, well, give Cinnamon Horchata another chance and also let me borrow your red polka dot dress and then we’ll talk.
In general this was a really solid mix pack. Usually mixes have at least one dud, but even the peach ale is probably going to be someone’s favorite. I wouldn’t hesitate to pick this up again, and seriously, try the cinnamon horchata if you get a chance!
Blue Moon Cinnamon Horchata Rating: 8.5 out of 10
Blue Moon Vanilla Wheat Rating: 8 out of 10
Blue Moon First Peach Ale Rating: 6 out of 10
Overall Rating: 7.5 out of 10
