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.)

The favorite beer. Period.

If I've said it once, I've said it a thousand times, people. I guess it's time to commit it to a random corner of the interwebs. It's called Ephemere (green apple variety, please). It's made by a brewery called Unibroue, which may just be Canada's single greatest contribution to humanity. I've yet to taste something Unibroue put out that I didn't like (other tasty offerings include Blanche de Chambly, Fin du Monde, Maudite and Trois Pistoles) but without doubt, the king of them all is the Ephemere. It's a crisp, light white ale with the essence of green apple, but without the overbearing sweetness of a cider or even a Lindemans lambic. You can find it in Vegas at the Freakin' Frog, LBS at Red Rock Casino and Resort, the Yardhouse, or Lee's Liquor. Try it.