I cannot express enough how happy I am that Panther Creek is starting to put their beer into cans for me to enjoy my leisure. I always feel like if I get a growler of a beer, that I'm for some reason put on a time crunch. Technically, the growlers that I use are sealed, and the beer in them should last a while, but I think I put a strange pressure on myself to go through them before they go bad, and this detracts from my enjoyment of the beverage itself.
First thing I notice is that color. It's not blue. A big old blue panther in the middle of the can, and blueberry written across the top, and I expected this to have a blue hue to it. That said, it looks like almost no other beer that I've had. If anything, I would say it looks more like a brown ale that has a little mahogany red in it, but the thickness of the haze is tremendous. The head comes out in a respectable fashion, and it dies down at an average rate. It does leave some lacing on the sides, and I commend the brewer for that. The aroma does not overwhelm with blueberries. Instead, a blueberry mist is tossed into a wheat heavy blonde, and this suits me just fine. The can says there is vanilla in it, but I can't smell any.First sip is a shock to the system. The beer has blueberry and vanilla in it, and it has that peculiar cream ale style of light, puff pastry taste to it. I don't know if that comes from the malt or what, but I am just a guy who reviews beer; I'm not one who knows anything about it. It's not a bad sip, per se, but it isn't tremendous. It's more in your face with a unique flavor than it is a bold step for beer kind.
Tip-in is sweetness wrapped around blueberry peels, vanilla extract, and orange spritz. The middle calms down and smooths out very nicely with the vanilla sweetness glazing a path for blueberry and the pastry malt to glide down the gullet while giving mouth a sense of purpose. The finish is an abrupt end of the glazed pathway with an unexpected uptick of tartness before smooth sweetness comes back for the vanilla trail off with a blueberry haze.
Bottom Line: Not just any brewery can produce a good dessert beer. These guys can.
3.75/5