12 July 2011

Brussels – Fruit Beer Apple (Waitrose) [By @SpectreUK]


I’ve tried a Brussels Fruit Beer from Tradition before. Tradition have been brewing fruit beers since 1905 and as I recall I was surprised to enjoy their last offering. Cinabar has subjected me to many alchopop style fruit beers in the past, which generally had an overpowering fruity taste that wiped out any flavour of beer. I can usually tell when there is no beer flavour as Cinabar will proclaim on tasting “Oh, I like that one!” The last Brussels Fruit Beer I tried I was happy to find that the beer dominated over the fruit flavour. There is a strong smell of apples mixed with barley and malt to this beer. This beer is flavoured with apple juice and is the colour of cloudy lemonade. It has a sweet fresh apple taste that almost tastes like cider, but doesn’t have the added brown sugar flavour like Timmermans' Lambic beer. There is a good hit of barley and malt flavour behind the apple flavour that reminds you that you’re drinking apple juice mixed with beer, but unlike the last fruit beer I tasted from Tradition, the fruit taste is the dominating flavour here. That’s not necessarily a bad thing as the fresh apple taste makes you feel refreshed and healthy, which is a further step away from the biker bar’s Snakebite of old. I much preferred Timmerman’s Lambic beer to this apple juice beer though, it must be my brown sugar sweet tooth, although some would say I’m sweet enough… Nah….!
By Spectre

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