Finally got some neew beers to try

Pin It Now! This is a beer I have wanted to try for a while and I finally picked some up along with the rest I will be mentioning this week. I got them at the Carry Out off license by the Ashtown train station in Dublin. The Wells Banana bread beer is like a tin of Ronseal. It does exactly what it says on the tin. In this case it delivers exactly what it says on the bottle. A beer that tastes like banana. Not the banana notes you get off a wheat beer (they do not have banana in them) but a full blown banana experience. In fact there is little to remind you that you are drinking a beer. It is like a banana drink with alcohol. It is pretty drinkable and my wife loved it of course but it is not something I would bother with myself. I was very dissapointed to read that as well as actual bananas they add banana flavourings to the beer. I would like to see a natural version of this with less banana and more bitterness.


I picked up a couple of Baltikas. This is the Baltika 6 Porter which I had with Al from Fuggled when I was over last month. I decided to give it another go. The one word I think sums this beer up perfectly is oily. This seems to be the Castrol GTX of beers. It is oily, coats everything it touches and the lack of carbonation enhances this feeling. It is pretty sweet and to be honest is not something I enjoyed too much.







Last night when I got home from work I started to cook a Chilli. I had stopped off at Tesco to do some shopping. While there I picked up 6 bottles of O' Haras stout and two Fullers honey Dew for my wife. I had no intention of drinking the O' Haras though as I had other things to try like this Masrtons Pedigree.
This is a typical English style ale, I enjoy these a lot. I am not going to say I did not enjoy this, the opposite is true but it was simply uninteresting. I could just about get a touch of oak from it and on reading the bottle I discovered it is oak aged. The only other Marstons I have had was Old Empire and I was not too impressed by that either. I did enjoy the old empire but it was very weak for an IPA. I wonder what this says for the rest of their range? Anyway I enjoyed the Pedigree and it is very drinkable, just like the Old Empire so perhaps this is the way they brew their beer? Session beers? This is worth drinking and I might get another some time.


After the Marstons and before I sat down to eat my Chilli i opened this bad boy up. To be honest I had no idea what this was. I knew it was brewed by Schneider & Sohn GmbH of which I have only had their Hopfen Weisse which I found a little sweet. This is called Aventinus and on the back it said it was a doppelbock so imagine my surprise when I poured it and caught the strong wheaty/banana aromas one would expect from a wheat beer. It turns out that this is a weizenbock. This was pretty sweet but not in a bad way and it was absolute magic. My wife liked it too as I expected she would.
The Aventinus pours like a cola, a very dark brown. I could see chunks of yeast pouring through the bottle and settling down at the bottom of my glass. This is a pretty strong beer at 8.2% but you do not feel it, not until it is gone. I am pretty happy that I got two of them and have one left to drink.


This is my second Baltika and since I had just finished a wheat I decided to stick with it so I had the Baltika 8. It is a perfectly respectable wheat beer that happens to be brewed in Russia. As you can see from the picture it is very carbonated. It took a few pours to get it in the glass and reminded me of my own wheat beer. It tastes a lot better than my own wheat beer though. I do not think this is as good as many German wheat beers I have had but it is certainly a very nice beer. At 5% it is not overly strong so you can drink a good many if you like. It was the cheapest beer I got at €2.19 so certainly worth buying as that makes it one of the cheapest wheat beers I have seen so it provides excellent value for money.

I have some other beers to try this weekend from the same store. I got two bottles of Youngs double chocolate stout. One I will be drinking and the other I will be keeping to compare to my own chocolate stout when that is ready in a few weeks.