Review by: Cory Smith
It’s March. It’s March and we are having yet another snow day. I’m not complaining, believe me, I’ll take as many days off as I can get, but this snow is getting ludicrous. I’ve been cooped up grading papers for hours, and I need a break. Luckily for me, I have a fridge full of beer just waiting to be tasted, and today’s winner is Snapshot by New Belgium.
Snapshot is kind of a trendy beer right now. You can tell by the instamatic camera on the label, and the incredible, highly-filtered pictures of it you see online, that this is a beer hipsters will love. I’ve even done my attempt at being trendy by adding as much drama and shadows to the picture above as possible. Clearly, I should stick to I stick to writing and reviewing, not cell-phone photography. But, I digress.
Back to the beer. Snapshot is technically a wheat beer, and technically a hybrid beer. What new Belgium has done is make one wort, and split that wort into two processes. Most of it is treated like a regular wheat beer, but part of it is treated like a sour. Then they mix these two together to create a beer with depth, character, and harmonious flavors.
This is the video New Belgium has on their website dedicated to Snapshot, explaining a bit more about their social-media-inspired label.
Appearance:
If there is ever a beer that is unfiltered, Snapshot is it! This is a cloudy, opaque, straw-yellow beer that pours with a thick, pillowy, pure-white head. The lacing clings to the glass like ice on my windshield. If I squint, I can see the carbonation exploring the glass, but it’s not a big, lively beer based on looks. Actually, Snapshot is exactly what I look for in a wheat beer, aesthetically. It makes me feel like I’m in Germany getting a whit on draught.
Aroma:
The aroma on Snapshot is light, bready, and spicy. There is a great wheat bite that reminds me of a beer made with rye. The Cascade hops offer a lemon zest aroma as well. It smells like it is going to be extremely clean, bright, and have a decent citric tartness. This was brewed with wort that has Lacto added, which will add a sour characteristic. This comes through on the aroma as well. It’s like smelling a light beer mixed with Lemonheads candy.
Mouthfeel:
I poured this pretty vigorously to get a big head on the beer, but in turn I think I lost some carbonation. It is a smooth medium-bodied beer with almost a silky texture. Snapshot has a interesting mouthfeel in the fact that it starts silky, and ends light, airy, and dry.
Taste:
As the smell predicted, this is a wheat beer with a refreshing sour bite to it. It starts very bright, with a clean, malty, wheat-bread flavor, and then ends citric, lemony and dry. The ride this beer takes you on is enjoyable, until the aftertaste. Snapshot has a stale, wet-husk flavor afterwards. I get it less as I drink the beer, but the very first sip was like going up a roller coaster, coming back down, and while I was screaming, laughing, and loving the ride, the car stopped and the ride broke down while I was still on it. The good news is, with each sip I get less and less aftertaste allowing me to fully appreciate the complexity it has to offer.
Conclusion:
I love wheat beers, and I love New Belgium, but this just isn’t a winner for me. I respect it for being unique, fun, and technically advanced. As I drink more sours, I realize just how hard it is to make a perfect sour beer. This is technically only half of a sour ale, but I don’t think the sour side of it works for me. I appreciate the dry tartness in the finish that compliments the bready, lemony wheat beer, but that aftertaste just ruined it for me. That being said I’m going to give Sanpshot a C+, or an 80 (remember, we try to go by the more educationally strict 7 pt scale!).
Just because this is a C+ beer, doesn’t mean that it shouldn’t be consumed. This would be a good beer for people to take to cookouts, or enjoyed with a citric ceviche. If you see it on tap, give it a try, but if they offer other New Belgium Beers, I’d suggest Ranger IPA or Fat Tire instead.
Cheers!
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