Badgers and bananas (My Top 5 Favourite Beers)

Member Name: ermintrude

Product:	My Top 5 Favourite Beers
Date:	22/08/02 (400 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: It's beer! What more do you need to know?

Disadvantages: It costs money. Apart from that I can't think of any.

Five favourite beers? Just FIVE favourite beers? I suppose I can narrow it down a bit, but you have to bear the following in mind:

1 - I live near the greatest pub in the world (you are entitled to disagree, but I just won't believe you :), Norwich's Fat Cat, where "every day is a beer festival" and there can be twenty or so real ales on pump or gravity at any one time. I try to remember the ones I really like, but after a long night drinking four or five pints of your own, and supping everyone else's, how are you supposed to remember the names? Especially when they don't appear again for weeks (or ever). And that's just due to the number of beers sampled, before you factor in the alcohol!

2 - I probably go to the off licence twice as often as the pub (just chillin' at home with a beer, NOT a Bud...), so my selections are biased towards bottled beers.


Okay. Beers.

1. Badger Golden Glory. Oh yum. If you like the sweetness and fruity smell of Golden Champion, then try this. I'd rather have this than champagne any day. When you drink it, it's like you've been Tango'd by the summer, and then you get to the crispness of the beer. Who needs mass-produced lager just because it's hot? Badger's usual brown bottle sports a pale shiny yellow-green label and large dark writing for this one, if you want to look out for it on the shelves.

2. Charles Wells Banana Bread Beer. Bit more of an autumn/winter beer here. Dark and rich, smooth and velvety, and with just enough of a whiff of banana to make your nose sit up and take notice. Not at all sweet, sickly, or "banana flavoured". Bonus points for having a banana bread recipe on the bottleneck. Half of those points taken away because the recipe contains unbelievable amounts of butter and your arteries harden as soon as you read it. Dark brown bottle, dark brown and yellow label, and of course the recipe tag.

><br>3. Enville Ginger Ale. I've only had this on tap, but it's a gorgeous light beer with a smidgen of gingery spiciness, and not so much of the sweetness found in Badger's Blandford Fly (also a gingery beer). Incredibly drinkable - light enough to be a summer pint, gingery and warming enough for a night by the log fire. I've never even seen a pump tag for this, so can't help you identify it!

4. Fraoch Heather Ale. I have only ever seen this in Waitrose, although it may be more widespread. You may have gathered by now that I like my beer with a bit of a taste of something else (only a hint, mind, and they have to taste of beer too - I'm not an alcopop girl!), and this has the flowery-and-slightly-woody scent of heather on top of a light, slightly hoppy beer. The heather comes out in the aftertaste, and makes for a "different" taste in that it's obviously not beer, but not sweet like other flavourings used in this kind of beer. Look out for a tall brown bottle with a conical-type neck (like Kronenbourg bottles).

5. St Peter's Suffolk Gold Ale. St Peter's is a small Suffolk brewery, but Tesco for one stock their beers in most areas. Most St Peter's are a good bet (apart from the Honey Porter - tasted like burnt wood ash when I had it), and they do grapfruit, spiced apple and cinnamon, and lemon and ginger in the way of flavoured beers. However, I like the clean, uncluttered taste of the relative newcomer, Suffolk Gold. No cloying aftertaste, hardly any bitterness, just a nice smooth beer. Keep an eye out for the typical oval St Peter's bottle in green/brown, with parchment-type label and a neck tag.

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