And The Valley Drinks: Blood Orange Envie

Parish Brewing Company just concluded their inaugural Grand Reserve Month. The event replaced Grand Reserve Day which marked the release of their annual Grand Reserve barleywine, a cellared ale. Previous incarnations of the event have included new, brewery only beers along with live music and food trucks. This year, they changed it and decided to release special new bottled beers each Friday beginning November 18^th. Each consecutive week for four weeks straight would see a special release or two.

The first special release was Blood Orange Envie. The base beer, Envie, is a juicy, tropical, lightly bitter American pale ale that’s one of my go-to beers. It ranked as one of the top tailgating beers for me and can be found regularly in my fridge. Naturally, I was intrigued by a blood orange version.

The beer pours a hazy, dark shade of yellow – like a perfectly mixed tequila sunrise. Because craft beers should have better aromas than your Dad’s beer, I took a big whiff of it and was not disappointed. My nostrils were met with citrus aromatics which reminded me of a juiced up version of the base beer.

My first sip was more like a gulp as I took a couple of heart swigs out of my glass. If you’ve ever had Tang (the drink the astronauts took to the moon) then you have an idea of what it tasted like, but better. It was bright and tangy with grapefruit and orange. The bitterness was tamer than regular Envie due to the added blood orange so there was more of an orange rind bitterness than pine.

All in all, the BO Envie was easy and delicious to drink and a tremendous first release for Grand Reserve Month. Give it a 4.75 out of five stars.