Floris Ninkeberry
Brouwerij Huyghe

 

 

 

3,6% ABV.
Poured into flute.
Pours slightly hazy orange-golden beer with delicate off-white head, moderate to weak retention, some brown tea-like sediment.
Smell of devilish chemicals, insecticides with apricot, peach and mango notes, sweet, hop hues on a border of recognition.
Taste - sweet, reminds mix of water and some fruit puree/jam, light body and fruit gelatin-like aftertaste. Avoid!

 

 

 

 

 

 

Served on-draught into an Antwerp beer passion weekend 2011 beer sommelier stem-glass at Antwerp beer passion weekend in June 2011. Reviewed from notes. I'd had it before out of the bottle in Dublin and preferred it bottled.

A: Pours a two finger head of nice soft cream, great thickness, and good retention. Colour is a semitransparent gold.

Sm: A mild strength aroma of light berry fruit ester hops and maybe vanilla.

T: Berry fruit notes and ester hops - especially on the climax. Sweet but far from overly so. Simple but well balanced and pretty well built.

Mf: Smooth and wet, featuring nice sharp coarseness on the climax to coax out the flavours of the body. Complements the flavour nicely.

Dr: Priced highly, of good quality, easy to drink, and of average ABV. Worth a try if you're a fan of the style.

Better from the bottle, with some age on it.

C+

Bottle with a date stamp of 05/12 and notches at b, M & 12. Poured into a Duvel tulip.

A: Pours a light brown with hints of pink. Light white head, little retention. Minimal lacing.

S: Berry aromas. Mango. Sweetness. Good for this type of beer

T: Where's the beer? Clearly not a live beer, as it is overly sweet and dominated solely by berry flavours. No malt character nor hop presence is noted. I may as well be drinking a Bacardi Breezer...

M: Cloying, and sticks to the tongue.

D: Upon reading the back label it seems to indicate in a language I am unfamiliar with that it is 30% juice. No wonder it is the way it is. A fruit drink, yes. A fruit beer? No.

Pale straw yellow appearance with very bubbly head. Smell is sweet with a wide variety of fruit, such as pineapple and mango.

Taste is mainly cranberry, mango's and strawberry, very sweet but still crisp and refreshing. Picked up some wheat. Medium bodied with moderate carbonation. After taste is bitter with a lingering strawberry taste.

This is a pretty good fruit beer. Not a beer typical beer I would drink on a regular basis, but refreshing to drink once and while, especially if it is hot outside.

Peach-straw coloured, half ginger spritzy off-white head. The beer is cloudy, in sunshine it showed a lemon-lime hue. Minor slippery lacing, wispy centre after the fizz subsides. Smell is strawberry, a fresh basket of peaches, tropical fruit punch. Taste of fruit juice very much apparent, of which 30 per cent of this beer is comprised according to the label. Not a lot of bitter happening, stone fuiit flavours dominate. Aside from the fact that it doesn't taste much like beer, it's refreshing and satisfying, perfect for mixed company and as a conversation piece on a summer patio. Pleasant and avoids the syrupy texture of some fruit-juice-added fruit beers, crisp mouthfeel is influenced by wheat and barley malt backdrop. Well worth a try although I always find it hard to take fruit beers too seriously.

Interesting fruit beer. I'll be honest, I have no idea what a ninkeberry is. Apparently it's a mix of passion fruit and mango according to wikipedia. Aroma is very fruity with candy overtones. Taste is candy fruity with lots of carbonation. For a fruit beer, it isn't bad, but not great either.

Ninkeberry looks arguably as much like juice as it does beer - which is not surprising considering fruit juices make up 30% of its contents! Its body is a pale straw colour with a thin, misty haze. Its bubbles are almost cartoonishly large and all seem to rise at their own pace. Sooner or later, however, all end up as part of its (pristine white) milky frothing.

The aroma is graceful and delicate. It is nearly as floral as it is fruity. It is fragrant but gentle and subdued. It's the aura of a colourful garden and hot sunny weather. It exudes the tender, elegant scent of roses, lavender and jasmine. Its fruitiness is far from cloying - the mango, apricot, passionfruit and peach smell like the real deal.

And it tastes like the real deal, too - real fruit juice that is. I happen to be big on fruit juices and nectars - the real, freshly squeezed, pulpy stuff and not the frozen, vitamin-enriched, corn syrup blended concentrate crap - and as such, I really like this Ninkeberry. As a beer drinker, which I also happen to be, I don't seem to mind it.

And looking at the (limited) consensus on this website it seems I'm far from alone in considering it a surprisingly respectable fruit beer. To use the word "respectable" is rare with beers of this nature - formulating sweetener and artificial flavours into sub-par beer is not exactly a practice most of us on this site would consider "respectable". But this one is.

The mouthfeel is thin but what do expect from a beer of 3.5%? Sure, it does have a very high-pitch, aspartame-like sweetness but that dissipates almost immediately and all that lingers is the delicious taste of fruit. I hate to say it but this one might hold its own with IPAs and Weiss beers when it comes to hot weather suited drinkability.

It is unlikely that anyone should hate Floris Ninkeberry, although I would understand people preferring a more beer-like and less juice-like offering. This is one fruit beer that does not contain all the cloying sweetness, the obviously artificial flavouring and the syrupy texture that has riddled most North American fruit beers. This fruit beer is exactly what it should be: a tasty, refreshing, light drinking beverage perfectly suited to warm weather.

The hazy straw body is topped by a fairly retentive white head. There's lots of visible carbonation. The aroma is of sweet tropical and and orchard fruits. It smells of mango, apricot, and peach. There's something that reminds me slightly of pineapple, which I assume to be passionfruit. It's not anywhere as sweet as Chapeau Exotic or Fruli. It's still quite sweet though. This has a pretty big fruit flavour, to the exclusion of any character the base beer might have on its own. Despite the last ingredient being a rather cryptic "Flavour," this tastes pretty natural. Must be "natural" flavour. A little bit of acidity cuts the sweetness a little. It's light bodied and sticky. Even with a little lift from the lively carbonation, I still found it a little bit cloying towards the end.

Pours a cloudy orange with a nice tall head with good retention. Spiderweb lacings all the way down. Loads of visible carbonation.

Smells like... fruit. Incredibly sweet, like concentrate. Strawberry (artificial strawberry) is the standout aroma.

Well, as advertised! Heaps of fruit, mango and strawberry are the easiest to pick out. It tastes like candy. Super sweet, but nice and refreshing when cold. Wheat adds a bit of character and some good body.

It does what it does well. Can't fault them for making a tasty drink.

Whether or not you like Floris Ninkeberry depends on what you are looking for in a fruit beer. If you are looking for a beer with hints of fruit you'll be disappointed. If you're looking for a very fruit-forward drink with hints of beer you'll have hit the jackpot. Personally, I dig both, and find taht with the fruit category you have to set all you preconceptions aside and be prepared to receive either of the two possibilities.

As soon as the beautiful bottle is cracked open you can tell this is heavy on the fruit, Ripe aromas of mango, peach and passionfruit waft upwards, only to be heightened once the beer is actually poured. A faint beer aspect clings to the profile, but may be more imagination than anything. The pour itself results in a straw coloured liquid sitting under a frothy white head, that although it shows passable retention, only leaves a few isolated spots of lace. Juice is the first thing that comes to mind as I taste this beer. I have a jug of tropical fruit juice in the fridge, and this tastes like a sweetened version. Passionfruit leads off and forms the main thrust of the flavour, but its also joined by mango, peach and apricot. A very light and pale maltiness can be found in the finish. No bitterness at all,, and a moderate to high sweetness. The body alternates between light and sticky, but is of little consequence, as the beer drinks so quickly that its gone in a little over five minutes.

If I was craving a beer would I reach for this? Probably not. If I wanted something light and refreshing, then why the hell not?

Pours a nice honey color topped by a bright white head.

It smells very exotic, nice and fruity, like fresh papaya, apricot and mango with and a hint of sweet perfume. I guess it smells like ninkeberries, but I'm quite sure I don't know what that is.

The taste is a sweet mango and ripe orange peach flesh with only a faint beery background. *pause for thought* Yeah. I really don't know what to say about this other than it tastes like peach and mango and passion fruit juice carbonated and mixed with beer. I'm sure there's a market for this, and if you like Früli this is probably going to be right up your alley. But it's too sweet for me and, even when viewed as a fruit beer, to me, the fruit should compliment the beer, not completely dominate it as is the case here.

Mouthfeel is medium bodied and perfectly carbonated.

I guess it tastes nice. But does it taste like beer? Not even close. Whoever listed this as a Belgian pale ale was on drugs.