16 April 2011

Brussels Red Fruit Beer (Waitrose) [inc List of Flavoured Beers] [By @SpectreUK]


Brewed by Belgian Beer Tradition this appears to be another fruit flavoured beer from Cinabar to torture me with. It came with a promise of several other less dangerous sounding beers as compensation, so who am I to complain? Just a lowly unpaid blog writer trying to make his way in life… Don’t believe me? Neither do I! Apparently the Belgians have been brewing this Barley Malt beer since 1905. That seems enough time to perfect anything, but I’ll find out on tasting. The label on the bottle has a summer theme to it, with old stone buildings surrounding a city centre (Brussels, I presume) market place, and in the midst of this glorious scene is an image of mixed strawberries, cherries, raspberries, blueberries and blackcurrants. Underneath this fruity image it states “red fruit”, which confused me a little on seeing the blueberries and blackcurrants, but nevermind… I know… I know… I’m stalling… on opening the beer and pouring it into an apprehensive glass I took note of the cloudy pinkish beverage. Taking a big sniff before drinking I could smell the fruitiness of the beer. Great, I thought, another overpowering alchopop friendly fruit beer that Cinabar will love and I will hate. Wrong! For the first time since trying fruit beers like raspberry, cherry and Timmerman’s, I could actually taste more beer than fruit, rather than a hint of beer behind the fruit or no beer taste at all. I could identify raspberry and strawberry with a hint of cherry in the flavour, but the fruitiness of this beer didn’t overpower me. This is one of the best fruit beers I have tasted and it would go well with a healthy fruit pudding or on it’s own for an after dinner treat. Although I’m unsure if I’d actively hunt this beer down again, it’ll go down in my invisible book of dodgy sounding beers that Cinabar has made me try that I liked; see Orange Peel, Thistle, Meantime chocolate, Raisin, Pumpkin, Chestnut, and Whiskey. Hah! That should take Cinabar an age to sort out all those links! Now who’s torturing who?
By Spectre

2 comments:

Ccfiya said...

Just out of curiosity, what are some of those fruit beers that you have had? I'm somewhat of a beer fanatic, so this sort of intrigues me. Though i have found most fruit beers to be a little bit too heavy on the fruit, with no identifiable beer taste (like you've mentioned). However, the likelihood of me acquiring this in Canada is rather slim...

cinabar said...

We've managed to find American pumpkin beer here in the UK, so you never know. There are few links in the article above, but trying clicking the category 'beer' above and have a browse. :-)