Review: Booze: July 2006 Archives

Importer: FBI Ltd., Twickenham.
Strength: 4.9% ABV
Form: 375ml bottle.
Price: £1.25 (Nelson Wines, South Wimbledon)

Firstly, let me tell you about an American beer I drank once. It was sniffed with much trepidation, for good reason. A pinched nose, a sip, and it's gone down. Hang on a minute, what was that? Flavour? A double-check of the label to confirm its origin, a surprised expression, a shrug, and then a rather pleasant drink afterwards. The maker: Anchor Steam.

The interesting thing about that beer is that it had the complex flavours of bitter without the nasty aftertaste sme leave, and the palate-cleaning sensation of lager without tasting like it had just stepped out of a chemical factory. I've just picked up another bottle.

Now to VB. To fully-appreciate a drink, it has to be served in the right glass and environment. Whisky in a tumbler with a splash of water and MOTAS at your side, White Lightning from a paper bag on a park bench, and VB in a chipped Redditch CAMRA glass and a bottle of mouthwash.

Noseplugs at the ready, and I crack open the bottle. The psycho bottle opener is quite effective at working out which beer is worth drinking, and will typically wrench the lip off the bottle and deposit tiny glass shards into the beer. It didn't find it necessarly to make this stuff any less pleasant to drink and the cap came off cleanly.

The first sip of an unfamiliar beer is never great. The flavours are new and the remnants of the previous are still on your tongue. It usually takes a couple of mouthfuls before it can be determined whether or not the beer is actually any good. VB's impressive achievement is that it manages this right to the bottom of the glass.

VB seems to be going for a somewhat similar hybrid approach to Anchor Steam, but unfortunately fails to manage to taste nice. You get the bland flavour of lager with an impressively bad bitter aftertaste. It's somehow sticky so that the nasty flavour needs to be scraped off the tongue.

I think I'll just tip it down the drain, rinse the glass, and pour myself a nice mouthwash...

Rating: 3 out of 10.
Reviewed: 2006-07-15.