New Belgium Heavy Melon Review

Name: New Belgium Heavy Melon
Style: Fruit Beer
ABV: 5%
IBUs: 14

Alright so as I was editing my other reviews from Lakefront Brewery, I was having this beer when I suddenly decided that I needed to expedite this review. Right now, we're shifting our focus to New Belgium Brewing, who just released a new beer called Heavy Melon, complete with a Gallagher reference in the label as well.

It's a fruit beer made with...........watermelon and lime. Ok, I can understand that they want to do a fruit beer, but using watermelon is a dicey choice since watermelon beers don't exactly have a glowing reputation for being good. However I'm willing to hold off on judgement until having it.

Appearance - Clear bright orange color with a mild amount of visible carbonation. The head is on the foamier side but there's not much in terms of overall lacing.

Aroma - Skunky, rotten fruit. No, I'm not making that up, I'm getting nothing but a skunky-like aroma here that reminds me of rotten fruit. I'm hoping that it tastes much better than it smells.

Taste - Well, the good news is that it does taste slightly better than it smells. The bad news? The taste is still pretty bad and there's really isn't a whole lot here in terms of taste. Sure you've got the watermelon flavor, but I'm looking for that lime to help balance things out. The only lime I'm getting is a very faint lingering at the end of the palate. There isn't even any hops or anything in here to give it an additional dimension of flavor.

To all the brewers out there, please, please stop with the watermelon beers. Use cherries, apples, cranberries, blueberries, or even bananas. Anything but watermelon! Watermelon by itself may be awesome but it doesn't work when it comes to using it to make beer. I've had quite a few watermelon beers since I first started drinking craft beer and all of them have either been horrible or sub-par at best.

Had the lime aspect of the flavor been more pronounced, it wouldn't be as bad but it still wouldn't be pretty good. Honestly, this is the worst beer New Belgium has done and I think it's one of the worst craft beers that I've had to date. I can understand wanting to branch out and try new things but I would rather see a much better effort from the brewery.

This one is a drain pour. If you feel tempted to buy this at the store, for the sake of your taste buds, just keep walking!

New Belgium Heavy Melon - 1/10