Belhaven Fruit Beer (Bottle)

Brewed by Belhaven (Greene King)
Style: Bitter
Dunbar, East Lothian, Scotland

Dark amber with fine white head indicating use of real fruit juice. Aroma is.... well.... of mixed fruit. Initially relatively sweet, the some sourness from the fruit in the middle. Quite a good bitter finish for a fruit beer as opposed to being just sour. Other than that the flavour is indistinct. I would have been happier if they had chosen just one type of berry with which to flavour the beer rather than the mixture.

Bottle
Dark amber, low head. Honeyish grainy, slightly vineous - metallic fruity (berries), some english hops. Light Body, slightly fizzy.

This was voted "Young Person’s Champion Beer" at lat year’s Great British Beer Festival by "a panel of young adults, aged between 18 and 30, who had never tried real ale before". Which probably says a bit about the target market. Fruit beers are as common as hen’s teeth in Scotland, so this is an interesting choice for the brewer. Poured a bronze colour, with a 1.5cm head that had some length and laced a little. Unusual aroma for a fruit beer, dominated by smoky malt rather than the fruit. There’s some sherbet, a dab of strawberry jam and a splash of weak tea in there, too, but it’s a very different beast from the classic Belgian styles. First taste.... and it’s pretty awful. Way too skinny in the body, desperately light on fruit flavour and astringent in the finish. Dominant flavours are wet cardboard and watery fruit juice. On the plus side, it’s not over-sweet. I’m a fan of the brewer but this just doesn’t work. (Bottle, best before Aug 2006)

Honey bronze body with an average white head. The aroma is pretty flat, but probably the highlight of the beer, berry and dried hay. Was expecting big flavours of fruit but there was hardly any at all, thin, some fruit showing, agree with watered down Ribena plus it was a little bit tart. Overall drinkable but not very memorable.

Bottled, pasteurised. Orange amber with white bubbly head. Initially quite a thin flavour, couldn’t get to grips with it, then came through a sweet unspecific, something like Tizer or bubblegum, flavour. The sweetnes became cloying and the beer background unprepossesing. Not to my taste.

From a small bottle.Satsuma in colour,poor head.Autumn fruits,with some malt,sounds great,tastes ok.

Light amber colour with a slim frothy head. Blackberry and malt aroma. Fruityish taste, some sort of berry and malty. Pretty thin with an almost metallic taste in there. Quite refreshing. Not particularly bad, but not much to recommend it either.

Having enjoyed their other beers I decided to give this one a go. The packaging looked nice, nice label, nice red foil neck, the concept sounded ok. Upon opening I was met with a big berry smell, almost artificial, like sticking your head in a basket of freshly picked berries. In the glass it looked like a normal pale ale, nice amber gold colour, and a nice white head. Unfortunately it wasn’t the best drink, and I feel it was past it’s prime (the expiry date was over a month away, so it should have been ok, but probably hadn’t travelled well). The main flavours were of dry leafy hops, cardboard, and other oxidised flavours. Could have been nice, but not this bottle at this point in time (probably need to be consumed very fresh).