Beer as comedy

They had to be having a laugh at Northern Monk when they came up with these. Two beers in collaboration with frozen roasted side-order brand, Aunt Bessie's, claiming to recreate the effect of a Sunday roast's main course and dessert.

The first is called Sunday Dinner, described as a "roast dinner brown ale", and includes roast potato and Yorkshire pudding in the ingredients. That presumably explains the ugly lumps spotted through the murky appearance. It looks like someone's overdone the gravy on this dinner. It smells good, though: a very traditional burnt caramel and banoffee air. The flavour brings bittering liquorice and a touch of smoke to that sweet caramel base. At 5.7% ABV there's plenty of body and it could pass for more: the mouthfeel smooth and the carbonation low, almost like a barley wine. This is a very decent brown ale, though much too sweet to accompany, or replace, a roast. It would work better as dessert. I'm thinking with hot apple pie and some good vanilla ice cream.

Its companion piece gave me the proper fear. Jam Roly Poly: a pale ale brewed with plum, apricot, strawberry and custard. A pale ale! It's a pale and hazy orange colour, looking soft and New-Englandish with a loose topping of white foam. The aroma is sweet and perfumed, more candystore than jam, I thought. Sweet flavour: check. They've made good use of the plums here, as a succulent stonefruit was the first hit, followed by quite a fresh and real strawberry. I was worried that the sweet fruit would fight with the hopping, as often happens in fruited pale ales, but they have sensibly dialled the hops a long way down, and the only bitterness is supplied by the apricot -- entirely complementary with the rest of what's going on. This works, and is rather better and more integrated than the foregoing brown ale. I wouldn't call it a pale ale, but I'm not sure what it counts as, having more in common with a weissbier or Belgian fruit job than anything English or hop-driven. If the sweet and fluffy Belgian fare floats your sensory boat, this is one to take for a spin.

The gimmickry is all in the branding here. The beers themselves are both actually quite sensible, lacking the Wonka-factor I expected. That's probably for the best.