Orange Blossom Pilsner won an award at the Great American Beer Festival, but was it deserved?
Fruit- enhanced beers are usually not my style, but I agree that they can really hit the spot on certain occasions and provided they still taste like beer, some of them are good enough to recommend. One fruit- enhanced brew with a few positive tasting notes is Thomas Creek Orange Blossom Pilsner. Let’s take a closer look:
Beer Bio:
Style: Czech style pilsner
Calories: Unknown
Carbs: Unknown
Alcohol Content: 5.5 percent by volume
Thomas Creek Orange Blossom Pilsner pours to an orange color with a faint nose of honey and biscuit. A fair amount of foam can be produced with a hearty pour, but the foam doesn’t last very long.
Tasting Thomas Creek Orange Blossom Pilsner yields exactly what one would expect. Flavors of honey, orange, light malt, and earthy hops are present in varying quantities. The flavor is crisp with touches of hay, cereal grains, etc.
With its combination of light fruit/honey/pilsner, Thomas Creek Orange Blossom Pilsner makes a good choice when one is seeking a beer with a slightly fruity taste but that still offers the flavor of beer. One interesting note is that there is no actual orange peel or anything relating to an orange in the ingredients list for this product. It is actually made using orange blossom honey and while there is certainly some orange flavor, it is nothing compared to other orange- enhanced fruit beers, some of which contain orange peel.
Thomas Creek Orange Blossom Pilsner did manage to pick up a Bronze medal at the 2004 Great American Beer Festival and it has won over some fans with its pilsner qualities and orange honey profile. Do I consider it a world class product? Not exactly, and I am a little surprised it was able to win a medal at the GABF. I like the crisp flavor profile and the honey notes, but there is nothing really exceptional with the taste of this beer and most consumers, like me, will come away from the experience with a shrug of the shoulders- a sure sign of malt beverage mediocrity.
Rating: 5 Cheers out of 10
Leave a Reply