At Pub 27 in Pompeii
Guinness Open Gate Crosslands Honey Ale
Date: October 29, 2018
The Story— Most of the story runs in our Hopping Around main post to the left of the Beer of the Day. But there’s a story to this beer. It’s a local wonder using tons of local honey from the Apex Bee Company. (Well, OK, less than a ton, but a heavy hand of 240 very effective pounds of honey that shine in every taste.) Most brewers use honey to boost alcohol; flavor that’s left is the flavor of the flowers that the bees stole. This one’s different — the 7.4% abv attests to a full fermentation, but your palate assures you there’s still some of those 240 pounds of bee’s work left behind.
The Beer—Not all of the honey is fermented and the taste of honey and honeycomb reminds me of my West Virginian youth as it shows as much spice as sweet flowers in the flavor. I won’t be buying six-packs of this very sweet beer — Ellie calls it a gooey date beer– but I respect its distinctiveness and the skill of the brewers who put this together. It’s so much better than I thought it would be.
Value — Good. It’s eight bucks for an American “pint”, but someone has to pay the bees’s minimum wage.
This week we present our first Brewery of the Week with seven fine beers from Guinness– most brewed in their spanking new Baltimore location, but a couple of Irish pots of gold as well.
After Guinness we return to HIGHLIGHTS OF EUROPE– Surprisingly good beer in “bad beer cities.” The best we’ve found in researching our next book – a guide to great beer in European tourist cities. (Planned publication 2019.) We’ll shift back to great American beer finds next week.
Later in November we return to the US to highlight some great American craft beers, some of which we’ve found in researching out first US Beer publication: Brews and Snooze-– Breweries you can visit and walk back to a fine place to spend the night. Look for it in 2019.
About these posts: We taste and evaluate over a thousand beers every year. The beers posted here rank in the top quarter of those tastings. Values: “fair” is a good beer at an above market price, “good” is worth the money, “very good” is a bargain, and “excellent” is a steal.
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