December 2008 Archives

This one is a Christmas special from the Wychwood brewery. They call it a “seasonal brew with plum and spice” but we all know it’s just a marketing ploy to cash in on the primary gifting period.

It has a rich malt aroma and it tastes of Christmas. Either that or an average dark ale with a hint of spiced fruit. Well, “average” may be a bit too harsh (it is a nice ale) but it isn’t really anything special. It’s pretty much exactly what you’d expect from a Christmas special, which is exactly what I wanted when I chose it. Hooray.

It has goblins with a Christmas pudding on the label and it’s 5.0% ABV.

After the disappointment of that raspberry beer from Flanders, it seems appropriate that my next beer should be Liberation, subtitled “A Beer To Be Remembered”. According to the label, sales of Liberation should generate at least £10,000 a year for The Royal British Legion. This is a cause that I support wholeheartedly so I hope that the beer lives up to its promise. It is 5.2% ABV and it is brewed by Thwaites.

It smells delicious: the aroma is strong and malty with a heavy hint of something sweeter, possibly fruity. The flavour isn’t actually as strong as the aroma might suggest; I’m not quite sure what to make of it. It is very nice but also very simple. I suppose it is what they call ‘smooth’ (whoever ‘they’ are) which is not necessarily a bad thing but it does make it a bit boring. On the other hand, it is very pleasant indeed.

This beer isn’t one of those beers that amazes you at the first sip but the more sips I have, the more I like it. I tend to prefer more complex flavours, whereas this beer has only one single flavour, but it is a nice flavour. It has a pleasantly bitter finish and hints of sweetness, rather like a diluted version of its aroma.

Yes, definitely smooth.

This raspberry beer by the Van Honsebrouck brewery in Flanders is a fruit flavoured variation on Bacchus, a beer of a traditional West Flanders style. I don’t usually go for fruit beers but for some reason this one called to me as I wandered down the beer aisle in my local supermarket. It is 5.0% ABV and it comes in a half-size champagne bottle with a paper wrapping instead of a label.

It certainly looks good, both in its packaged presentation and when poured. It has an orangey-red colour and a curious aroma that combines malt and sweet fruit. It is very sweet, the wrapping claims that it is sweetened with both sugar and “sweetener”, and the sweet fruit almost masks the flavour of the beer completely. There is a malt flavour underneath all the sucrose but it is dominated by raspberries and sugar.

To be honest, I would rather be drinking normal Bacchus than this raspberry flavoured version. I don’t even know what normal Bacchus tastes like but it has to be better than this. The undercurrent of beer, when my tastebuds can filter it out from the sugary fruit, is quite pleasant. But this is just too sweet for me. I love raspberries but not with this much sugar and not in my beer.