Belmont Strawberry Blonde tastes of fruity excrement. Novelty Beers: wah wah wahhhh

Just because it's Good Friday, doesn't mean we have a good beer planned. I bought this beer weeks ago just to piss off David and now it's zero hour. When we first started this year, one of the first beers I brought home was a Banana Bread Beer. I bought it because from time to time I want to taste beers that are different, that I would normally never try and are out of our comfort zone.

People always ask David, what's your favorite beer? That's always a hard question to answer, there are so many...Okay they say, what's the worst beer you've ever had? Easy answer. BANANA BREAD BEER. And David wasn't wrong, it was truly horrendous. Here's my write up: Wells Banana Bread

David hates fruity beers. David hates novelty beers as much as he hates fruity lambics and saisons. Come to think of it, David hates a lot of things but most of all horses. I don't know how he does it, but David has found glue made from horses. I think it came from Colonial Williamsburg. He doesn't even own a dog but he buys the dog food with horse meat in it, just to keep up their bottom line. It's the least he could do.

See what horses can do to a line of thought? They're such a tangent. Another point illustrating horses are evil. Anywho, the irony of me buying a beer to piss off David, is that I have to drink it as well. Before recommending me for idiot of the year award, do know that I don't mind the fruity beers as much as David, but in my nearsighted decision to purchase the fruit brew, I had forgotten how truly awful novelty beers are. They taste like...Horse Glue.

I can smell the intense Starburst-like flavor from far away. It's nearly overpowering. However, this smells much better than it tastes, because it tastes like @$$- like an off batch of natty light. Similar to the Banana Bread Beer, the fruit is all in the aroma and not in the flavor profile.

The funny thing about novelty/fruit beers that the general buying public don't realize, is that the beers aren't actually "brewed" with fruits (typically, although exceptions like Dogfish Head Aprihop might use apricots in the boil). When you see a 'blueberry' beer, you're actually getting a beer that was made with ingredients similar to any other type of ale, but right before the beer was bottled they added blueberry syrup. Thus, there is little fruit flavor to the beer as the beer has already stopped fermenting. It simply smells like blueberries. Once you see behind the curtain, fruit beers become less of an ale and more of a novelty.

This style of beer always smell decent but taste horrible. Even though the Strawberry Banana was better than the Banana Bread, it still receives a PEARL HARBOR rating.

As we finish off this brew, I'm already looking forward along to my trip down to San Pedro with Sara P, Mark Snyder and Joanna for the long anticipated Railroad Revival Tour - Old Crow Medicine Show, Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeros, and the truly transcendent Mumford and Sons. The three bands are touring via railroad for a handful of dates from Oakland to Austin and plan to collaborate on material along the way. CAN'T WAIT!