Friday 8 April 2011

Tesco Finest Belgian Wheat Beer

Following a timely and informative post from the Pub Curmudgeon i found a reason to pop down to my local Tesco's. At 4 for a £5 I picked up a few of the Morland Crafty Old Hen, Fuller's Bengal Lancer and ESB, and Adnams Broadside.  I've not tried the Crafty Old Hen before mostly due to its usual price of £2.79, and because its a Greene King bottle, i seemed to have an aversion to paying that price for a bottle of theirs, i tend to find their bottled beers tasting very similar to each other.
Anyway as i clunked my way down the isle with my basket, in the 'world beer' section they also had reduced several bottles, one of them being their Finest range Belgian Wheat beer.

Recently i've been buying quite a few wheat and abbey beers, they've been my 'go to' beers, i have a Tesco express around the corner as well the main store (it is Tesco after all) and having cold Hoegarden or Leffe has become a frequent thirst quencher. Seeing as the weather was so bloody nice today i thought ahead and pictured myself, kids in bed,  enjoying a large cold wheat beer. The Finest Wheat beer is normally about £3.30 but now in promotion it was about the £2.20 mark for a 750ml 4.9% abv bottle which seemed good value, and worth trying.

Brewed by the Huyghe family in Belguim its a lemon yellow slightly cloudy beer, with hints of sherbert, lemon and coriander. Very crisp, quite dry and short in the mouth it had a reasonable amount of lemon and orange pithy dryness, vanilla, quite floral, banana. Its was okay, nothing outstanding, reasonable for the price i suppose.
Would i but it again? Well if it was still at that price maybe, in the Express store but they dont sell it there, in a main store there is a better (!) selection so i would doubt it.

Terrible label also, bad font, bad graphics, looks like some GCSE kids knocked it up for a project.

2 comments:

  1. What temperature is this brew best served at - room temperature or chilled?

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  2. I would suggested chilled, not quite straight out of the fridge, beer too cold suppresses flavours.

    (Personally though i'd choose other wheat beers over this one to be honest.)

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