Bells Batch 8000 Ale

Cloudy orange color with decent white head. Went perfectly with my spicy pork chops. Getting big orange aromas. Some spice in there as well. Nice wheat flavors. Some sticky sweetness and a malt profile to give this one some body. Slight alcoholic burn on the back end is a little disappointing. I see where you can’t really call this a wheat beer but it feels more like that than it does a belgian strong.

Luckily I was able to get a hold of three bottles of this one batch brew. Thick orange color, hazy and deep. One inch cloudy off white head, nice lacing, and steady carbonation. Heavy wheat aroma, dry to the nose. Fresh banana and orange citrus with some spicy coriander. This smells wonderful. Fairly dry on the palate, finish is a touch tacky. The ABV burns slightly, but it’s not offensive. Somewhat sweet and bitter, the mouth feel is complicated and odd, but it works well enough. Perplexing flavor, it captivated my interest but after enjoying a couple bottles I can say it’s very good, but not great. Amped up Witbier flavor, strong and powerful. Crisp wheat with some dry honey. There’s a noticeable bitterness in the flavor, perhaps this has a big dose of hops? Mild citrus fruits with light spice. The flavor does fall short of being great, it just doesn’t pull together. Taking a delicate style to begin with and boosting it to a high gravity beer can be a tough task to accomplish. It’s a great drink, and I’m glad I got to get a few.

This beer seemed like it was trying to hard to me...I had a really good witbier at a restaurant over the weekend ("Trucadero White"), which seemed to be what this beer intended to be. Intensely spiced with a good amount of maltiness. This beer is even more malty, but this body, when combined with the spice makes this seem almost like a pumpkin beer or maybe a spiced holiday beer. This is beer is a mouthful, and while not bad (I’m liking it more even as I write this), I feel like you should know what you’re getting into! Appearance is a dark cloudy amber. Aroma is strongly spiced, but with a hint of maltiness. Flavor is as I’ve described above. Mouthfeel is very sticky.

Bottle. Aroma or wheat and coriander and perhaps touch of yeast and it’s quite a nice blend. Poures a light copperish. Flavor was interesting, little bit of pepper and some orange very strange almost hard pick out. Palate was nice, medium fullness an interesting lingering pepper and sweetness. Overall, I liked it and I’m gonna take my time with the rest of it.

I always like it when a wheat beer is fresh and the yeast comes off easily from the bottom of the bottle. Pours with a medium white head, good lacing, but really comes back with swirling, nice. A dark oak color, hazy. Well the yeast hits you first and I can almost smell the age that the strain came from, a stone room that hard bread has been kept. The spices come out mainly in the taste; pepper, coriander, and the orange. I had to look up Paradise seed and it first came up as a type of cannabis, odd, but further searching it is an African spice with citrus notes, which I can guess gives this its twang( and not just to the brewers). Although there is a certain tobacco quality to the aftertaste. Sticky on the lips with a lingering dryness on the throat. Good but please bring back Batch 6000.

Received in a trade from BA ClockworkOrange, the Batch 8000 was poured in a goblet, and it sat there looking cloudy like orange juice, but topped with a two finger foamy head. The nose was clove, orange peel, coriander, and bubble gum. The taste is where it started to deviate from the standard formula for Witbiers, as the citric tang was mixed with a liberal dose of earthy yeast notes. Hops were not very prominent in this beer, but the alcohol certainly was. The mouthfeel was medium thick, and the body sticky due to the persistent sweetness. Good all around quencher.

Freshly tapped keg at Bone Dry Highland, Indiana. My first spoken words after my initial taste from a 12 ounce bottle earier in the week- "OBERON ON STEROIDS". Hazy orange with a HUGE white head. Coriander, bananas, lemon zest in the nose. Thick, rich body dominated by wheat sweetness and bananas. The big alcohol provides a drier, peppery finish that was superb from the tapped pint and more muted in the bottle. A weonderful beer.

12oz bottle from Capone’s (Norristown, PA). pours hazy orange-golden color with a thick off-white head. Nose of yeast and coriander with notes of citrus and bubblegum. Flavor is complex with wheat, orange, spice, yeast, pepper and alcohol. really nice beer.