Goose Island - Nut Brown Ale

Breweries who make delicious beer do themselves precisely no favours by doing so. I drank Goose Island IPA with no expectations and it quickly became one of my favourite beers, the bottle looked fun, I liked the idea of geese brewing beer, though after talking to their representatives I am now sure that is NOT what actually happens, and the beer itself bowled me over as if it were a blind child with glandular problems who really needed the toilet and we were both in a narrow corridor. So what did I do? What COULD I do? I had to find more, I had to see what else Goose Island had to offer, and so it was that I stumbled upon Nut Brown Ale at The Bottle Shop. I leapt at it like a fevered Civet cat and now I sit here, the weight of expectation skewing my every thought.

...Yay! When they say it's a nut brown ale they mean it's a brown ale that tastes rather nutty and not, as some companies tend to do by accident, a brown ale that is coloured like nuts. The aroma is of the hazelnuts you get wedged in bars of Cadbury fruit and nut and the taste has hints of the rest of the bar in it too. A smooth and easily drinkable character helps this beer along and the low carbonation almost gives you the impression that you're drinking nutty milk with a little alcoholic kick, like if Eggnog was awesome and filled with nuts or if you put ale and custard in a blender... Just less of a mess and more of a mellow masterstroke.

This beer is more inclusive than it is exclusive, I've had beers that should only ever be had by beer connoisseurs and I've had beer that even a child would find more drinkable than Sunny D. Goose Island, or so it seems to me, make beer that EVERYONE can enjoy and, this is the best bit, you can enjoy them on any level. I can see myself drinking nothing but Goose Island down the pub but, instead, here I am analysing it. It's uncanny is what it is. That's 2 for 2, I've got 1 more lined up but it won't be for a while, I'm looking forward to seeing what else they've got and you should too.

Nut Brown Ale seems to be available in the UK only at speciality beer shops, even when I look it up online Google gets confused and insists that it's a European beer... Yes it's done in an English style but I'm pretty sure Chicago is in America.

Food Suggestion: Double deep fry those chips and salt them up like a bout of kidney failure waiting to happen, shovel them down your face by the fist full you big mess and enjoy Goose Island Nut Brown Ale like a freakin' king!

Drink this if you like: Chocolate stouts like Choklat by Southern Tier but want something a bit smoother and a bit more easy going. You can drink this anywhere and at any occasion, you could drink it on the bus if you wanted to... I imagine no-one would judge you, in fact in my head I can only see people cheering.