Hello again. Time for another little beer review. I was fairly pleased with the last one, especially the way it got seen by seven people in the first two minutes. Some of you shiny folk must have subscribed or something. I can't tell you how much I appreciate that, you guys are awesome. Big hello to all the South Africans who have been reading. or the one South African who's been reading a lot. Either way, hits from SA are beginning to rival hits from the US. I've been in SA a couple of times on the way to Mozambique. Stayed in Johannesburg one time and just outside it a couple of times and I saw a warthog. Oh yeh, I went to kruger Park too, that was awesome! Saw elephants, hippos, giraffes, a rhino, crocodiles, baboons, impalas and a kudu. Maybe more, I think there were monkeys, but now it's beer time.
Bit of an intro
Well it's another Berentsen's beer. From the 120 year old brewery in Egersund again, the same as last time. This one's an amber ale, which means it's made with amber malt, not that it's amber coloured, although a lot of beers are pretty amber coloured. The amber nectar, was that Castlemeine XXXX? I remember the adverts on tv from when I was a kid. That's not important. Amber ale is a kind of pale ale. Pale ale is made from pale malt which is now the cheapest malt because it's so mass produced. Amber ale has a proportion of amber malt added to a base of pale malt. Amber malt is pale malt that's been toasted at 150-160°C and tends to have a lot of flavour. The rumour is that the flavour in amber ales is mainly from the malt, and although hops are used, they're not usually used in any great quantity, even by the Americans who apparently use more than the British. The amber malt itself has a bitter flavour which would balance the sweetness from any unfermentable sugars to a degree, and make bittering hops somewhat redundant.
This particular beer uses American hops. Cascade to be precise. Apparently cascade hops have a relatively high alpha acid content, so effective for bittering. They also have a bit of a spicy and flowery thing going on a a citrus quality, particularly a grapefruit kind of quality. They're often used in American pale ales, probably because they're from America. I would assume British pale ales use British hops.
I got a nice 33 cl bottle for 29.90 kroners, the same price as the Skumring brown ale. That's £2.28, $3.49, €3.20 or 48.35 South African Rand. It's 4.7% abv again, also the same as Skumring. I suspect that means they use the same yeast, but I'm not certain about that. Several of their other beers that I've tried are also 4.7%, so to me it makes sense that it's the same yeast. Probably a good choice, since it means their beers can be more widely available in all the supermarkets, and not restricted to government distribution only.
Packaging
What can you really say about beer packaging? This one's in a smallish brown bottle, like a heck of a lot of beers are. Have a look:
Are you surprised by what you see? If so, why?
Fairly standard as bottles go. My only complaint is the size, it's not a pint. The label looks ok. It's quite eye catching on the shelves. Not particularly beery looking in my opinion, but thats ok. I was actually in the supermarket this afternoon and the Berentsen's beers do really stand out. Mainly it's the lines on the boxes of six that make them stand out like on the one below.
Impossible not to look
The design for this beer as a woman (presumably called Amber) with her boobs out. It's a bit shocking for a polite English gentleman like myself to see, but at least she's had the decency to cover her collar bones. Apparently American schools don't allow girls to show their collar bones in case the teenage boys are overwhelmed by the sight and fly into a kind of hormonal frenzy. Maybe an American reader can confirm that with a comment. Anyway, let's a have a closer look at the label. The label that is, not the lady. Eyes front, gents.
Boobs! Hee hee!
With a closer look it appears as if she might be wearing a dress with golden boob armour that happens to have ornamental nipples, kind of like a Roman breastplates that's designed to make the soldier look really buff. There's more to the label than the lady's endowment, however. There's some amber and black lines that are pretty eye catching. Again, it's not a super high quality label and this one wasn't stuck on so well. You can see it peeling off on the right there. The simple design with the lines coming out is growing on me. There's some writing on the back describing the beer which I'll try to translate:
"Berentsen's rav er et mørket overgjæret øl i amerikansk stil. Et fyldig, karamellrik øl balansert med generøre mengder amerikanske cascade humle. Lukter fruktig med innslag av mørk sjokolade. Relativ høy bitterhet."
What the heck? Here it is in a real language:
"Berentsen's Rav is a dark, top fermented beer in an american style. A full bodied, caramel rich beer, balanced with generous amounts of American cascade hops. Smells fruity with hints of dark chocolate. Relatively high bitterness."
There are clues about what to expect here, some of which are glaringly obvious clues. For example the mote about the fruity and chocolatey smell leads me to deduce that it smells fruity and chocolatey. caramel rich suggests sweetness, and generous amounts of hops suggest bitterness. At this point I'm expecting it to be the bitter side of balanced, on the grounds that they're saying it's "American style" and that it has generous amounts of hops. American beers tend to be a bit more hop focused than British ones, and the hops are the main source of bitterness. Also amber malt carries a certain amount of it's own bitterness to start with.
It's brown. Calling it an amber ale seems a bit of a misnomer, but the name of the style is not connected to the colour as much as to the type of malt used. Have a butcher's hook:
Not as amber as the name would suggest.
It's a pretty nice colour as beers go, but then you can't really miss. Personally I find darker beers look more appealing, but the colour doesn't tell you much about quality, it's just personal taste. It gives you some clues about whether darker malts were used and darker malts have flavours I find appealing, so dark beer for me please.
Aroma
Pleasant hoppy aroma, which decreased as I worked my way down the glass
Citrusy, not quite orange, not lemon or lime. I'd be willing to go with grapefruit.
Faint malt, like malted milk biscuit malt. This one increased down the glass and got a bit less biscuity.
Just a hint of savoury Marmite like flavour, (possibly dead yeast, possibly not) which increased as I worked my way down the glass.
A bit of toffee developed halfway down.
Possibly a whiff of very ripe honeydew melon, but part of a general fruity smell
Taste
Initially malty sweetness
Aromatic hops come in after a second or two
Sweet grapefruit
Caramel. Definitely caramel, but only if you hold it in your mouth for a few seconds
Aftertaste
A grapefruit like sour/bitter citrus at first, the sour and any sweetness disappearing quickly but the bitter flavour lingering like with grapefruit.
A kind of crisp hoppy bitterness joins it
As with Skumring, the bitterness leaves your mouth feeling a little dry, prompting another gulp. Fairly standard for beer, and probably the reason pub goers drink so much of it.
Balance
Bearing in mind I'm still an amateur, I'd say this was quite well balanced and actually rather better balanced that Skumring. You get to experience both the sweet and bitter flavours, the sweet at first and the bitter mainly appearing in the aftertaste. The aftertaste is quite bitter, but that's how it's intended what with being American style, so that's a feature not a poorly balanced beer.
A few extra comments
The taste description on the label was fairly accurate. I didn't notice and dark chocolate until I started sniffing about to see if it was there. Then I did notice it, but if you go searching for a certain aroma you often find it whether it's there or not. I wouldn't have noticed it if they hadn't mentioned it. "Caramel rich" is a bit of an exaggeration. It's in there, but I wouldn't say richly.
The hops are definitely a main feature as the description suggests. Interesting that they named the hops, since I could get online and find out what to expect. The grapefruit note was definitely there and is something I'll look out for in future, especially in American and American style beer. I'm not 100% certain how much of the bitterness in teh aftertaste was hops and how much was the bitter flavour from the amber malt, but there were two slightly different bitter flavours. One being the grapefruity bitterness and the other being what I would call more hoppy. Knowing the hops used have a grapefruit note, I'd be willing to believe the other bitter flavour was the malt, but I have no idea really. It could just as well have been the hop bitterness after that grapefruit note had faded.
The Marmite flavour I experienced can apparently occur if the beer is left to ferment for too long before being bottled. Or barreled, but in this case bottled. The yeasts all die off as the alcohol level increases and the Marmite flavour comes from their little yeasty corpses. According to my old friend Mr. Tiffen it can also come from certain yeast strains, which impart the flavour while still living. I assume they're some kind of zombie yeasts. I don't know what yeasts they use at Berentsen's, so I can't tell how the flavour got in. I like it in small quantities, but one of the Christmas beers I tasted last year was overwhelmingly Marmitey.
Conclusion
Not bad. I preferred it to the Skumring brown ale because it had a bit more going on in terms of flavour and aroma, and was a bit better balanced. On the whole a better beer in my opinion, and for the same price. It's another decent, no-frills kind of ale from Berentsen's. Not so much body as Skumring, but still fairly full. Cheap and cheerful and not bad at all.
Would I buy it again? Maybe. Of the Berentsen's beer's I've tasted up to now it's the one I'm most likely to buy again, but I'm more likely to get a bigger bottle of something a bit more interesting. Of course if I was offered one I would be very happy to accept, and I might buy one again one day. Or a six pack if some guys were coming over or something. On the standard one to ten scale I'd say it's ok for the price, not spectacular, but better than others.
Next beer review will be Berentsen's Sorte Får. I might throw in an interesting review of Glen Glassaugh new make spirit before then though. I've been tasting that and it is indeed an interesting thing. Come back soon!
