Firstly can I just say thank you to the Lovibonds brewer Jeff. They do not ordinarily ship to Ireland but on contacting Jeff he said he would ship it for me. He also threw in a few goodies. I got a box with Henley Dark and Henley Gold. Perhaps best of all was the beautiful Lovibonds glass. Blogging about beer has some advantages sometimes. I did not use the Lovibonds glass for the Gold reserve though, I used large wine glasses instead.
Anyway on to the Gold Reserve. Only 500 bottles of this were made and I ordered 3 of them. One dissapeared last night. I will open the second in September with my brother in law when he comes in from the states. The third I will let age for a while.I had no idea what to expect here to be honest. It is called a wheat wine and this is a pretty new style. It is the only one I have heard of on this side of the Atlantic but I know from research there are a good few examples in the US.
I did a quick Cyclops last night while watching the final two episodes of 24.
- sight - Clear, Dark amber.
- smell - Sweet honey, very faint banana and clove, yeast.
- taste - Sweet, fruity, alcohol, reminds me of plum sake.
- sweet - 4/5
- bitter - 1/5
Unfortunatly (or maybe fortunatly) my wife did not like it, so I did the heroic thing and forced myself to drink hers too. Thankfuly this was good news for me. I am surprised that I liked this, I have never tasted anything quite like it and I am not too gone on sweet beer or wine. This just worked. It is obviously not a beer you can drink a lot of, apart from the style you simply can not because there were only 500 made. Perhaps another version will come out next year and they could make yearly limited batches like Fullers Vintage Ale.
3 comments:
It really is an excellent beer, I am surprised that Mrs S didn't like it - Mrs V thought it was lovely!
That surprised me too, I kept asking her to try it again and she kept making a face when she did. Ah well, more for me in the end.
I am sure the burden of drinking them will be onerous indeed.
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