“Formosa Bird” Pineapple Beer
North Taiwan Brewing

 

 

Bottle-conditioned in a 330ml brown bottle, bottled on 01/04/2013, BB 01/04/2014, served lightly chilled in straight pint glass. Note: This is in fact a contract brew for a local restaurant, but will soon be freed up as a permanent product under the brewery’s own brand.

A: pours a lightly murky, dark yellow colour coming with a thin off-white foamy head and very mild carbonation.
S: pretty sharp and assertive pineapple aroma prevails upfront, reminiscent of canned pineapples really, sweet but not sugary; given a very serious swirl, the beer base yields a rather subtle addition to the overall aroma with its wheat beer like wheat-ish and estery elements, but not sufficient to help render a balance against the pineapple’s fruitiness.
T: mildly effervescent, lightly pineapple-ish on the entry, surprisingly the flavour doesn’t come too sweet, but delivers an interestingly dry-ish sweet “bite” with just a dose of overripe pineapple’s sharp sour-sweetness. Not much lingers after the taste settles, until a lightly slick mouthfeel (quite like the same brewery’s other fruit beers and wheat beer) rounds up each sip.
M&O: the mouthfeel is quite thin and at times watery, showing a rather weak and feather-light bodied beer base; the flavour profile is in general not balanced, although the pineapple juice extract never really makes this beer a sickly sweet and unbearably aromatic one. All in all, knowing that natural juice extracts would be hard to work with, North Taiwan Brewery’s insistence on using only natural ingredients from the best source of juice extract in Taiwan is nonetheless remarkable. I look forward to trying this beer with an improved beer base and a subsequently better balance.