Brass Castle: Kingdom Of The Sparkle Pony (England: Table Beer: 2.8% ABV)
Visual: Pale, just slightly hazy yellow coloured body. Lots of small bubbled carbonation. Massive white mounded head that leaves some suds.
Nose: Bubblegum. Cane sugar. Fresh brown bread. Crushed Blackpool rock. Fresh nan bread. Sugared orange sweets.
Body: Bubblegum. Yeasty feel. Candyfloss. Unleavened bread. Lime sweets. Sugared orange sweets.
Finish: Bubblegum. Soft banana sweets. Peppery. Brown bread. Candyfloss.
Conclusion: Darn it – I thought I had found my perfect beer when I heard the description for this. A moderate to low abv, so very sessionable. Candyfloss flavours and “Sparkle Pony” in the name. I was excited. Turns out it is ok, nothing special, and as you might expect it is a bit gimmicky. Darn it.
So, aye, it is ok. At its base it hs that drinkable, slightly bready and yeasty table beer style. Solid enough. It gets fairly lost under what comes next, but is still a solid table beer base.
Soooo, the candyfloss. Now I knew going I that the beer would be at least slightly gimmicky. It is a candyfloss beer for fecks sake, the question was how well was it going to pull off the gimmick? And this …. eh. It’s pretty bubble gummy – reminds me of Sorachi Ace hops in that way but without the additional lemongrass notes. Sweet in flavour, not syrupy, but a kind of dry sweetness that really lingers. It has varied sugared fruit notes that come out over time, but feels very, very artificial.
Which, ya know, candyfloss. What did I expect? I guess I was hoping it would be used with a more subtle touch. This is a very silly beer, kind of fun as any silly bit of fluff can be, but not really a good beer in that. It really emphasises the long lasting sweet notes, where a more present table beer character would have let the sweet notes sparkle more in comparison rather than wear out their welcome as they do here.
It is still a laugh. It does what it says on the tin, but is pretty flawed as a table beer as it doesn’t have any sessionable character, and suffers as anything else due to lack of depth. Ah well. A laugh, but a shallow one.
Background: Ok – I did not just grab this because it is called “Kingdom Of The Sparkle Pony”. Though that did help. Nor just because of that and the fact this is made with candyfloss. Which is ridiculous but also sounded kind of fun. It was also because of the can art, which was super cool. I am shallow. Yes we established that a long time ago. Anyway, this is a table beer made with candyfloss. Because of course. Didn’t want anything too heavy musically to go with this one, so listed to the Celeste: Farewell soundtrack. So much good music in that game and a perfect match for the beer. Another one grabbed from Independent Spirit.
