Bread and beer are kissing-cousins, so it kind of makes sense to have something like a “Banana Bread” beer.

I mean, I saw it at my local Beer Heaven and had to pick it up. I mean, I just had to. I love beer. I love banana bread. It seemed a winning combination.

Later, after getting it home, I began to come to my senses. Banana beer? Oh come on. What was I thinking?

An even better question, what in the world are they smoking over at the Charles Wells brewery in England?

Bananas? Beer?

My friend over at Kegs and Barrels told me there’s no actual bananas in the brew, but he missed something on the back label. It says it right there. The “banana character” comes from English Crystal malt being crushed rather than ground, and then the flavor is enhanced by adding Fair Trade bananas.

Bananas in the beer.

So, here goes nothing. I’m popping the top right now. Taking that obligatory, pretentious sniff.

Low and behold, what do I smell? Banana bread. I kid you not, that’s exactly what it smells like.

I just IM’ed a very close friend of mine from England about it, who commented: “Oh please! Is it as dreadful as it sounds? To start off with, banana bread is SO American. Well? How is it?”

I take a drink.

“It really does taste like banana bread,” I reply. “It’s good!”

It is, too, even though if you think about it too hard it should be considered an abomination. You can taste the obviously beery notes around the banana bread flavor, and this is a genuine high quality English ale — not one of those flavored “malt beverages” — I have to congratulate Charles Wells for doing an amazing job in blending it all naturally together so that it actually tastes like the bread. The carbonation is very light, the body is heavy, and the brew itself very rich, with an alcohol content of 5.2%. The aftertaste is definitely on the chocolate malt side, warm and pleasant.

For you beer advocates out there who are curious about the “mouth feel” I can assure you it’s much smoother than bread.

To sum it up, if you like beer, and if you’re “SO American” that you enjoy banana bread, you will like this ale.

It’s not a Holy Beer contender, but it definitely gets high marks for originality.

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