St. Austell Clouded Yellow

Aroma: 6 | Appearance: 6 | Mouthfeel: 6 | Flavor: 5 | Overall: 6

Somewhat opaque yellow with small white foam head. Aroma has some vanilla flavor. Tastes some wheat, some spices, some banana. Aftertaste is bit dry. (Velp 201312)

Aroma: 8 | Appearance: 8 | Mouthfeel: 7 | Flavor: 8 | Overall: 7

500 ml bottle conditioned, from Selfridge’s food store, London. ABV is 4.8%. Clear golden / yellow colour (not clouded at all), large white head. Fairly strong and nice aroma of grassy and herbal hops, also spices. The flavour is spicy and herbal, but not overdone - still quite interesting. Fairly light bodied and easy drinking.

Aroma: 7 | Appearance: 6 | Mouthfeel: 6 | Flavor: 7 | Overall: 7

Bottled. Copper coloured, mediumsized creamy head. Aroma of banana, wheat and some spices. Flavour is caramellish, xylitol mixed with some red wineish hints and passion fruit. Also wheat noteable. Weird mix, but very refreshing.

Aroma: 6 | Appearance: 7 | Mouthfeel: 7 | Flavor: 7 | Overall: 7

One of the very last bottles that I brought back with me from the U.K. Something like this -- that clocks in at 5%ABV -- I would have normally popped open much sooner than four months after buying it, but wanted to share it with the guys. Richard's 40-something birthday fit the bill well enough. ;)

I'm a pretty solid fan of most of St Austel's lineup of cask-conditioned beers, but had some vague doubts about this green-bottle-only offering (the only green bottle I saw the entire time in Cornwall). I'm all for breweries branching out and all, but sometimes it is also better to stick with what you know (e.g. Bitters), when it comes to experimenting with esoteric flavors in wheat beers, for example. But..., I guess in this case, they could have done a lot worse.

"Clouded Yellow" is not very cloudy at all, especially for a Hefe. And with the rather typical head of foam, this really looked more fizzy lager-ish than anything else.

Coriander in the mix -- which is a mixed blessing, IMO. Not being a fan of this spice tends to throw off my opinions of Wits and such..., but at least in this case, it's not too overbearing.

No estery banana&clove here, and just a rather standard "English Ale" aroma, overall. Possibly made with the same House Yeast that all of the rest of the St Austell beers use?

Some interesting vanilla highlights in the flavor, but again, not all that overbearing. Gotta hand it to them here -- would have been very easy to unbalance the beer's flavor profile if they went nutty with the fruits and spices and such.

Rather dry, surprisingly enough. Good thing, too, since I think much sweetness in this beer would have quickly pushed it into the "cloying and boring" realm for me.

Not a bad way to unofficially kick off the summer. Just nothing that I would go out of my way to seek out whilst in Cornwall.
//TB

Aroma: 7 | Appearance: 7 | Mouthfeel: 7 | Flavor: 8 | Overall: 7

Nice English wheat beer, sort of German styled, vanilla taste but not overpowering. From the bottle, 4.8%.