YellowBelly Brewery Mummer’s Brew (2013)_ – Belgian Specialty Ale at 6.9% ABV | 30 IBU (C$10.00 at YellowBelly Brewery, 1 l, packaged on 1-Dec-2013, best before 1-Dec-2018, acquired 15-Dec-2013, reviewed 22-Jul-2020)
Appearance: clear medium gold with two fingers of fluffy white head, good retention and moderate webby lacing. (4/5) Aroma: doughy yeast, green apple, candi sugar, hints of orange peel and spices. (8/10) Taste: moderate-high sweet, moderate bitter, light tart. (7/10) Palate: medium slightly slick body, moderate-lively carbonation, sweetish mildly tart finish. (4/5)
Continuing to clear out the cellar. There certainly can’t be many of these left in existence – heck, this might be the last one! I had a vague plan that I might let this get to ten years before doing a vertical, but circumstances resulted in me pulling the pin at about two thirds of that way. That’s probably just as well, since I’m not sure this would necessarily have improved any (further) with longer cellaring: I suspect it’s as smooth as it can possibly get, and the time in the bottle seems to have allowed the purported spice and orange peel to fade, if not quite into non-existence, firmly into the background. It’s dominated by a bready doughy yeast very reminiscent of many Council beers, but is of course nowhere near as tart as those. In the past I’ve compared that aroma to “old-fashioned” home-brews from my childhood, which of course generally took that character from hot and desperately short fermentation using baker’s yeast. I certainly don’t mean to imply that’s the mechanism here, just that that’s the sensory impression I take from it. (Perhaps appropriately, given the “Mummer” moniker – I’ve certainly seen more than one such bottle bomb home-brew served to mummers in a stubby.) The taste, on the other hand, is more like a sweet-style Belgian Tripel, with candi sugar and a slightly slick body. All told, a bit too sweet for my preference, but decent. (15/20)
7.5/10 #ryansbooze ryansbooze.com
