Aoi Brewing Sweet Desperation Grass Wheat Ale is a 5% wheat ale from Aoi Brewing, based in Shizuoka, Japan. Like many other of their bottled beers, Aoi Brewing Sweet Desperation Grass Wheat Ale started out life in draft form before moving to bottled form towards the end of 2016. It’s brewed with Pilsner Malt, Wheat Malt along with Saphir and Perle hops, with variety of adjuncts such as coriander, orange peel, lemongrass, and lemon peel, along with the addition of sugars.
Aoi Brewing are clearly going for one of the longest names in Japanese beer.
Aoi Brewing Sweet Desperation Grass Wheat Ale Aroma and Taste
Aoi Brewing Sweet Desperation Grass Wheat Ale – surely they could have thought of a shorter, more catchier name – poured out a hazy golden colour with a large frothy white head on top. Perhaps it was desperate to get out of the bottle and to be drunk as Aoi Brewing beers only have a shelf life of three months or so. Hence why it’s been so hard to find them in the stores outside of Shizuoka. Lemongrass aromas permeated through the air as soon as the beer had been poured (I refuse to name the beer again unless necessary as it takes too long to type out or copy & paste), along with a wheat biscuit-like aroma too. It smelt quite nice – I kind of imagine Shizuoka, which is a pretty much a prefecture in Japan where you’re surrounded by countryside, to smell like this beer in Spring.
The first sip of the beer-that-will-not-be-named tasted like chewing on an ear of wheat that had been sprinkled with lemon – as weird as that sounds, it was pretty tasty and also quite dry as well. It was definitely an easy drinking beer but also a little, well, plain. The flavours never really got going in the body and kind of meandered along throughout drinking. Hints of coriander and orange came through but the main flavour was definitely the lemony ness of the beer. It finished off with a crisp dry bite, and some dash of lemon to the beer as it faded fast.
Aoi Brewing Sweet Desperation Grass Wheat Ale The Bottom Line
The addition of lemongrass and lemon peel made this beer something different and worthy of the admission price. Still going to refuse to say the name again.
Aoi Brewing Sweet Desperation Grass Wheat Ale
This beer can be bought from the following places online:
