4 February 2017

Clouded Yellow Beer (Waitrose) By @SpectreUK



It's been a bright sunny day here in the Midlands, which makes a change. Although still fairly cold in temperature, the blue sky reminded me of the hot sunny couple of days we get between the buckets of rain. This Clouded Yellow wheat beer brewed by the St. Austell Brewery, in Cornwall, reminded me of spring and summer time. Apparently Cornwall has plenty of Clouded Yellow butterflies fluttering around. Natural Cornish spring water is used to make this golden beer, malts of Maris Otter barley and wheat, and hopped with Williamette. It has vanilla pods, cloves and coriander seeds added in the brewing, so it sounded like it could be quite an interesting flavoursome treat.

On opening the 4.8% volume beer there was the heady spiciness of cloves mixed with the wheat and coriander in the smell. The bottle label suggested there is banana in the aroma, but fortunately I couldn't pick up on that. Although there is a decent helping of vanilla, which coupled with the herbiness from the hops may dupe the nose somewhat. There was a complex mix of flavours on first taste. It certainly wasn't like lots of beers I've tasted in the past, where it's "here is the hops, and then the malt moving into the aftertaste, blah, blah…" Or any combination of those flavours in all sorts of strange orders as some hops touch the tastebuds more than once or the malt is so heavy that it sits behind all the bitterness like the foundation of a building. This Cloudy Yellow blasted me with everything on first taste. The spicy cloves, and coriander mixed with the hops bashed my tastebuds for six like a cricket ball on a summer's day. Whoosh! And they keep on giving, as well as the wheat and malt all fighting simultaneously for first bat. Once the heavy spicy ball has left the pitch the malts run with it into the aftertaste across a box smoothed by vanilla. If you're looking for a beer to wake you up for the score, here it is. Not for the faint hearted. To quote Rick Stein in his cooking programmes; "Yummo!"

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