Fresh Hopped Bohemian - De Molen & Gadds'

Gadds' and De Melon (2 of my favourite breweries) combine in the most intriguing of ways to produce Fresh Hopped Bohemian, a 6.2% gold/honeyed brown, sweet smelling beauty that smells of freshly made honey biscuits and, for all intents and purposes, is as appealing and inviting as sunshine. Everything about this bottle just screamed at me to buy it! If I completely ignore that this was produced by De Molen and Gadds' (which is a bloody difficult thing to do) then it's still advertised as a golden czech style lager that uses fresh hops! That's amazing... If entirely true.

The pour is a little shaky and there is very little head but the colour of it, a shimmering brown/gold hides the fact that the carbonation is somewhat higher than I originally thought. You have to look very closely to see all the tiny bubbles rushing to the surface but they're definitely there.

HOLY CRAP! I WAS NOT EXPECTING THAT! A strong, yet refreshing, bitter orange taste that even leaves a little after effect that's not dissimilar to chewing the peel of a large naval orange. I'm not entirely sure what I was expecting from this but what I ended up with was a powerful flavour that's, by far, the most prominent part of the beer, attached to a light and refreshing body that, if attached to a lighter flavour, you would call a straight lager. How deeply interesting!

Elements of it are like biting through the skin of a grapefruit and then just lingering long enough for it to burn you. The flavour grows exponentially if you decide to have a chug, becoming more and more intense, like some sort of endurance test. There is also the hint of the sweet shop about this, it reminds me of when I used to buy super sour cherries and things of that ilk to see if I could handle them. I couldn't. However, I'd happily handle this all day because it hits you with its tangy power but never goes too far. I appreciate, very much, that this beer isn't scouring the taste buds from my tongue (even though it could) because I really need those...

Food Suggestion: A bag of Haribo Tangfastics and some rainbow sherbert. If only I was allowed to drink when I was 10, I would've loved this stuff!

Drink this if you like: Some of the Lambic fruit beers can be quite violently tangy but if you like that kind of thing, go to the Bottle Shop and ask them to pick you out the tangyest fruit beer they have. I've tried it... I'm man enough to admit I may have cried a little.