Banana-rama

Yes, it's fruity beer time here on the drunkymonkey page. After first spotting Wells Banana Bread Beer a few weeks ago, I finally got around to sampling it (twice) in the past couple of days. It's an enjoyable and interesting beer, but I don't see myself ordering it on a regular basis.

One way this beer totally delivers is by managing to capture banana flavor without tasting like it's made with Banana Flavoring. Good banana "flavor" is just hard to do -- most banana flavored things (especially candy) are gross, because the banana flavoring itself has a distinctively odd, unnatural quality. Luckily, the Wells BBB manages to avoid that blunder. The Banana beer smells just like banana bread, and the finish has a nice hint of banana flavor, but other than that, the slightly bitter beer itself doesn't suffer from the added fruit flavor.

Another win for the Wells beer is the absence of sweetness. The BBB smells of banana, and has a hint of banana flavor, but isn't particularly sweet, which I find to be a good thing. It still tastes like a pretty good (if just a bit watered down) brown beer, rather than a novelty.

(Available at Lee's Liquor and LBS at the Red Rock Casino.)