Thursday, February 12, 2009

Dodge the Jam


As you know I spent January not drinking. The observant among you will have noticed that the list of beers residing in my cellar grew exponentially during January as well. On one of my trips to stock up, I wandered from work to Cider Club - I say wandered, it was a Friday and sometimes I like to walk home from the office, which takes me an hour or so.

Cider Club is one of those wonderfully random places which from the outside seems to be a comic shop, but on the inside is in fact a comic shop that sells cider, and ales from the UK, in particular Wychwood ales. Having picked up a couple of bottles each of Hobgoblin and BeeWyched (deciding against more Black Wych), the owner asked me if I wanted free beer? Hmmmm, the agony of choice. So I walked out with a bottle of Belhaven Fruit Beer as well as the bought and paid for stuff.

Fruit beers are still one of those things which baffle me. I like the occassional kriek, such as the one from Mort Subite I had over the holidays, but most often fruit beers leave me wondering "why?". The Belhaven was no different, pouring a dark orange, almost red colour with a slightly off-white head and with a nose the reminded me of mixed fruit jam, my favourite, I allowed myself to be cautiously optimistic. Oh dear. The body was horribly thin, yes it tasted like fruit jam, but fruit jam so watered down that I seriously considered pouring it away. It wasn't truly bad, but neither was it something I will want to drink again, and I guess I know now why it was being offered for free - and even that wasn't a redeeming feature.

I will post a photo of said beer tomorrow - forgot to move it from my laptop to my flash drive. Oops.
Update: There's the picture.

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