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.)

Strawberry Fields

I have long been a fan of the Samuel Smith beers, so I really couldn't help but try it when I spotted Samuel Smith's Organic Strawberry Ale at my local liquor store.

This fruity ale smells strongly of strawberry as soon as the cap comes off the bottle -- you don't even pick up the smell of the actual ale from wafting, you have to get your nose right into the glass.

I didn't know what to expect from this beer flavor-wise, but what I got was still pretty surprising. On first sip the flavor is very strongly strawberry and sweet, but with a rather clean and bright flavor -- not as much like strawberry candy as I expected, but still very much the flavor of cooked strawberries rather than fresh, which was not surprising. After a few sips it is still sweet, though not as sweet as a cider, and the beer becomes increasingly bitter and ale-ish on the finish.

Overall I think this is OK as a summer beer, although I definitely didn't need to drink an entire 550 mL bottle of it (of course, I did anyway.) I think it works best as a one-glass beer, either on its own as something different and interesting or as a stop on a beer tasting flight. It might have some potential cooking applications -- somehow I think it could be incorporated nicely with a meal involving pork loin and a grill? -- but that's an idea best left to the chef in the test kitchen.

(Available at Lee's Liquor, also comes in Raspberry and Cherry flavors.)