Wonder Star

During a weekend spent cat-sitting my pals Mishi and Moo, I was treated to a fridge full of frosty brews, including a 473mL can of Wonder Star, a “botanical lager” from the wacky team at Flying Monkeys Craft Brewery. This Barrie, Ontario beer was low-test, at just 4.5% alcohol. Unfortunately, there was no ingredients list on the can (which was decked out in a Yellow Submarine-inspired motif), so I’m not certain which botanicals made the cut. However, I can tell you with some certainty that the beer was dull gold in colour, cloudy, and highly carbonated. It poured with a durable centimetre of eggshell head, and had a truly unusual aroma. Seriously, this beer combined scents like citrus fruit, gummy worms, and juniper to form an oddball combo. Unsurprisingly, the flavour also racked up a bunch of diverse elements: grapefruit was the most assertive, but candy and gin weren’t ever far behind.

As Flying Monkeys regularly seems to set out to do, Wonder Star was a unique and hard-to-classify lager. It combined some of the most diverse flavours I’ve ever experienced in a single lager, and the result was (largely) successful. If I were pulling the levers, I’d have upped the juniper and laid off the candy sweetness. For me, a “botanical lager” ought to taste of naturally occurring flavours, and somehow gummy worms don’t feel at home. Still, on a hot day (the humidex was almost 45 C, and Moo and Mish don’t live in an air conditioned home), this quirky little lager was ably refreshing and kept the sweats at bay for a little while. Would I recommend this beer? That’s not an easy one. Yes, I’d recommend it to beer geeks looking for something unusual or to occasional beer-drinkers looking to keep cool. I wouldn’t recommend it to fans of macro lagers in the market for something to keep them cool, or to beer traditionalists.

Rating: 8.0 out of 10.