It was beyond doubt that I was going to buy and review a beer called The Bear.
Why? Because that’s my nickname – has been since uni. It’s something that tends to happen when your last name is Humphries and you live in a country that has a long-running children’s TV show character called Humphrey B Bear.
Man, if I had a dollar for each time someone has sung the first line of that TV theme song to me I’d be a rich, rich man. Well, actually I wouldn’t, because I would have spent each dollar as I got it, rather that saving them all up until I got old.
But I digress. We were talking about drinking a beer that literally has my (nick)name on it.
From Victorian brewery Red Duck, The Bear is a braggot – a style of beer I have absolutely no experience with. So lets go with a definition I got off Wikipedia, that bastion of accuracy: ‘‘Originally brewed with honey and hops, later with honey and malt — with or without hops added’’.
Works for me. What Red Duck’s Scott Wilson-Browne has done is take some bush honey (which I assume is the origin of The Bear name) and make some with it. Then he made some beer – an amber – that would complement the mead and then mixed the two together.
The result is a great, big, complex and flavourful beer. It comes in at 9.8 per cent but I can’t believe that for a minute – this goes down far too smoothly for something with that alcohol content. The colour is a murky amber in the glass and the aroma is, as you’d expect, honey. There is also honey in the flavour but it’s understated and yet mixed through the entire palate. The thick feel of this fantastic beer made me think a little bit of honey stirred into porridge. There’s also notes of caramel and toffee and a load of other stuff in what is an intensely pleasurable beer.
Would I drink it again?: I’d absolutely love too. But I don’t like my chances, because there was only one batch of The Bear made. And it there never will be a second batch. Which is a utter crying shame. Something this good should be made again.