It’s that time of year for Saint Arnold to release the Blue portion of their Icon Series. I normally don’t get very hyped up about the beers in this series, but this year’s iteration is a weizenbock with cocoa nibs (supplied by the amazing Tejas Chocolate Craftory in Tomball). The reason for my excitement has to do with their Bishop’s Barrel series. The recipe for this weizenbock was used in BB4 and it’s one of my personal top 3 Bishop’s Barrels. It interested me to have a chance to check out the base beer and my expectations were a little higher than usual.
As any wheat base beer should, Icon Blue had plenty of haziness. The chocolate and malts imparted its brown coloring with a small amount of tan head that disappeared quickly. Icon Blue’s aroma was that of bananas, spices, and chocolate. It smelled like a frozen banana stand in a bottle, or glass if you have it like I did.
The flavor of Icon Blue is banana dominant with chocolate showing up midway through before flavors reminiscent of bubblegum round out the end. To be honest, I expected more chocolate in the flavor profile due to the darker malts and added cocoa nibs, but they just didn’t present themselves like I imagined.
Icon Blue, or any beer in this particular series, has the same labeling minus the colorway. The label features a charcoal grey background with Saint Arnold facing front instead of his typical side profile. He is wearing slightly different garbs than we see on the flagship Saint Arnold logo. His head centers in the “O” of “ICON.” The style of beer can be found on the bottom of the label or on the neck of the bottle.
My rating for Icon Blue is 3.5 stars because it left me wanting more, especially more chocolate in the flavor profile. It just didn’t have a feeling that there was anything overly special about it. My high expectations probably kicked it down a peg too, but I would definitely drink this beer again. Overall, Icon Blue is a beer I enjoyed and I would buy another six pack of it.
There is always money in the banana (beer) stand and this is a solid beer with tons of banana flavor. What do you think of it? Beers to you, Houston.
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Nick is originally from the Corpus Christi area, but found himself in Houston as of 4 years ago. You can spot him wearing a Hooks hat and drinking a glass of craft beer around the city. He typically prefers his beers to mirror his taste in music: complex, heavy, and dark.
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