If searching for an excellent example of an excellent idea gone awry, look no further than Wells Banana Bread Beer.
Prior to popping the cap on this bottle, the signs point to a positive experience. The label itself points out that beer was once known as “liquid bread.”
Those words alone conjure images of a thick dark beer a medieval monk might have brewed to get himself through a Lenten fast.
It is a valid expectation the veneer of which is peeled away with a pour revealing a highly carbonated, honey-hued body. Expectations quickly begin to fade like this beer’s quickly dissipating head.
A respite comes with the aroma emanating from the glass; the beer smells like freshly baked banana bread. There is also an added sweetness in an underlying malt presence.
Disappointment quickly returns with the apparent attitude taken that the “German Beer Purity Law of 1516” be damned. The Wells and Young’s Brewing Company prints directly on the label “Malt beverage brewed with bananas and banana flavor added.” What that “flavor added” is is anybody’s guess but judging from the unwelcome childhood flashbacks to artificial banana flavors, that “flavor added” component is anything but pure or natural.
The taste has a welcome spice as well as an unwelcome artificial component. It reminds of banana Laffy Taffy or of a banana slushie. That flavor lingers on the palate for far too long becoming bitter but not of a hop origin.
All in all a thoroughly disappointing experience from an idea that could have been so unique and enjoyable.
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