Sam Smiths Organic Strawberry Fruit Beer

One word sums up Sam’l Smith’s Organic Strawberry Beer, and that’s jam. Borne upon the pesticide free tentacles of  organic strawberry plants, this beer is firmly classified under the pigeon hole dedicated to ‘Fruit Beer’ in beer taxonomy. That is fruit beer and not fruit-y beer.

The distinction between the two rival camps is  is black and white, determined solely by my girlfriends ability to drink a given beer or not. If she can, the beer is a fruit beer, if she can’t it’s a fruity beer. And if she hasn’t tasted it then it doesn’t pong of fruit and must be another type of beer altogether.

Sam'l Smith: also available in raspberry and cherry

This is a beer so utterly dominated by fruit that it’s classification as beer might well be under threat. It’s genetic make up is more akin to Bonne Maman than real ale; a syrup of sticky, fizzy Panda pops and Taste the Difference summer berry preserve. By no means is the taste of British field strawberries, it’s plump, tinned strawbeeries on ice cream, doused in sugar and sweetener.

And by and large, it’s utterly divine – a sugar coated iceberg to blast your mouth free of anything savoury and replace it with unbridled strawberry sweetness.

You might not want more than one in a blue moon, but give it ago (it would have made a good accompaniment to Wimbledon!) because after the initial shock, Sam Smith’s have created a beer that develops. Take it slow and your reward is a growing emergence of sweet malt character that compensates you for your glucose overdose. And it just about makes this something  more than a quaint and quirky gimmick.

Beer information:
Beer: Organic Strawberry Fruit Beer
Brewery: Samuel Smith
Style: Fruit Beer
ABV: 5.1%
Country: England