New to the Irish market, and possibly new to the world, is Leffe Veille Cuvée, sporting shocking purple neckwear. My apologies for the photo which looks like it was taken in a cave, but my camera's in the shop at the moment and I'm reduced to borrowing Mrs Beer Nut's. You can just about make out that it pours a deep dark garnet hue, and it gives off strong fruity, estery aromas. The initial flavour is of sweet ripe fruit, and it's followed suddenly by a harsh maltiness derived, I assume, from the 8.2% alcohol. Both these flavours are shortlived and there is virtually no aftertaste. Coupled with the usual soft Belgian texture, this makes it an easy-going and undemanding beer rather than the considered sipper I was expecting.I only recently noticed that there's a Tripel in the Leffe range as well -- orange foil on the neck of this one. It has the proper cloudy orange hue of a tripel and contains all the right flavour elements of fruit, spice and alcohol. Unsurprisingly for Leffe, however, they are all toned way down and sweetened more than necessary. This is a tamed tripel for those who like the idea of strong Belgian beers but don't want to tackle a big one.
Another workmanlike performance from the Holy Brotherhood of St InBev the Clonglomerated.
I picked up a bottle of this in Spain and couldn't work out whether it was something "new" or one of the existing range rebranded in purple for the Spanish market. Or something like that.
ReplyDeleteI seem to remember really liking it, but that was in comparison to various works from the Brotherhood of San Miguel.
Yes, I made that point about Leffe being a useful go-to beer in low-quality zones last year. I still think the 9° is the best of them.
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