25 January 2014

Samuel Smith's Organic Apricot Fruit Beer [By @SpectreUK]


I've never been a fan of apricots, though not as bad a my feelings on bananas, as regular readers may know after my tustle with banana beer, but pretty much as bad. Let's face it, people in the almost know don't even bother to use apricots to ruin smoothies, as they already have bananas for that purpose. There is a packet of jam tarts that you can buy from supermarkets that have three different flavours of jam in them, strawberry, raspberry and apricot, and let's just say that my mom always ended up with the apricot tarts as I would always eat the others and leave the duds!

This Samuel Smith's Organic Apricot Fruit Beer was brewed at the Melbourn Brothers Brewery using traditional brewing equipment and techniques, and only using either organic ingredients or those that have been approved by someone who I expect can approve the use of organic and non-organic ingredients together. Melbourn Brothers Brewery only use traditional brewing methods with the best ingredients, which implies a certain level of dedication to realising pure quality of flavour over mass production. During the brewing process there is a primary and secondary fermentation with different yeasts and an "extended maturation", before the beer is transported to Samuels Smith's brewery in Tadcaster. Apricot fruit juice is then blended into the brew.

Apricots can be pretty deadly. Just think about those glowing orange coloured tarts that I put my poor mother through! Although having said that apricots pretty much taste like a cross between an orange and a peach. I was expecting this beer to taste a little bit like a cross between Timmermans's Peach Lambic beer and one of my favourite summer beers, which is Orange Peel beer. On opening the beer bottle there was a sharp smell of apricots wafting over the traditional wheaty beer smell. On taste there was indeed a sharpness from the apricot flavour that worked well with the malted wheat and barley undertones, and also the bitterness from the hops. There was an initial sharp orange twang followed by the soft peachiness one would expect from being attacked by an overly aggressive apricot. This Samuel Smith's Organic Apricot Fruit Beer did remind me of a blend of the two afore mentioned beers. I'd certainly recommend that you give it a try and if you want it to wash down a good meal, try it with a fishy dish like a good salmon steak with plenty of potatoes and vegetables on the side. Mmm... Hungry now...

Information on the bottle;
355ml glass bottle at 5.1% volume. Brewed at Melbourn Brothers Brewery in Stamford, in Lincolnshire, then blended and bottled at The Old Brewery, in Tadcaster, North Yorkshire. Best served at 44 degrees Fahrenheit, 7 degrees centigrade. Ingredients included; water, organic malted barley, organic malted wheat, organic cane sugar, organic apricot concentrate (4%), organic apricot extract, organic hops, yeast and carbon dioxide (both of which have been approved non-organic ingredients).
By Spectre

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