Deviant Dandy: Strange Brew Lawnmower Ale (England: Cream Ale: 5.4% ABV)
Visual: Hazy yellow. Some carbonation. Massive yellow white head.
Nose: Slight gritty bitterness. Wheat. Lime. Dried apricot.
Body: Moderate bitterness. Light gherkin. Lime. Peppery. Brown bread. Milky. Sour cream. Reasonably thick mouthfeel. Dried apricot.
Finish: Moderate hops and bitterness. Milky apricot. Gherkin. Kiwi. Lime. Sour cream and chives.
Conclusion: This has two main sides to it – a moderately thick, slightly yogurt like, milky ale. A gentle thing with moderate hop use. Actually feels like a beer to go with a curry , so to sooth its heat with its milky feel. Now I know the beer doesn’t have …casein … I think is the element in milk that allows it to dissolve the capsaicin that makes curry hot, so it won’t actually do that. It just feels that way – hope that gets across the feel of the beer.
Anyway, I digress – the other side of the beer is a slightly tart squeezed lime to sour gherkin set of notes – fresh and prickly. It feels like a rougher impression of the fresher tart flavours you get from NZ hops – just more thick, clingy and tingly. Around that unusual element you get some more standard apricot style hops, but delivered in a thicker, more cloying dried apricot in natural yogurt kind of way. In fact the whole yogurt imagery keeps coming back with this beer.
Strangely, while the notes are thick, it doesn’t make the beer heavy or intrusive as you would expect. The flavours are an odd mix of sweet, tart, savoury, and sour – yet together they feel fairly gentle and sippable. In fact going back to the early imagery, it feels like a mix of those sides you get at the start in an Indian restaurant – the heavier dip, the milky creamy soothing dip, the sour dip and the sweet mango chutney. All mixed together in one beer – and not as bad as that sounds.
Generally this is reasonable – odd but not really remarkable at the same time. Easy to drink, but also with some weight to it. The oddest thing is that for all its unsusual flavours, when you have swallowed it, the actual flavours vanish pretty quickly – you have to take another mouthful to keep it going. So a weak finish, but generally not bad.
An easy one to drink, enjoy while you are doing that, and then forget,.
Background: This one was a bit of a random pick. I liked the can design, the name Deviant Dandy, and I wanted something a bit more gentle than usual. So a cream ale seemed like a good pick – think I have only done notes on one cream ale before, and have barely drunk more than a a few anyway, so good to do something different. This was grabbed from Independent Spirit and drunk while listening to some of Extreme’s music on their youtube channel for a bit of glam rock fun.
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