Minoh Bloom by Minoh Beer

Minoh Bloom is a 5.5% golden ale. It’s part of Minoh’s seasonal lineup, and is made with five different varieties of hop. At the time of writing it seems to be out of season, so check the link at the bottom of the review for current availability.

Minoh Beer, along with Tamamura Honten, are one of my favourite breweries in Japan. Along with their regular lineup (standout beers being the pilsner and W-IPA), they also produce some pretty stellar limited edition beers, such as their Barrel-Aged W-IPA. So when Rob announced that he might have accidentally gotten me a saison (you know, the beers that make me lose a load of HP and give me the !!POISONED!! status effect) but don’t worry, it’s from Minoh, I wasn’t too worried (I’ve noticed that a lot of my reviews these days start with Rob getting me a suspicious beer, don’t they?).

All it really said on the bottle was that it was called “Bloom” and was a seasonal (or “seasonable” as Minoh puts it), so with nothing to really go on, I opened ‘er up.

Minoh Bloom Appearance and Nose

Minoh Bloom pours out pretty headless and a goldie-brown colour. I had no idea what kind of beer it was but assumed it was a hoppy pale ale. The nose was strongly hoppy, spicy and with hay and dry grass notes. I also got a wild yeast, estery aroma from it.

Minoh Bloom Taste

From the estery profile (and having been confounded by the “seasonable” name) I was under the impression that this was a hoppy saison, but that impression was quickly losing credibility. It tasted bitter and strongly dry hopped, but with the spicy, estery aspect to it. Three sips in and I was already getting chest pains, as well. I think I must have some kind of allergy to some Belgian yeast because it felt like my ribcage was about to explode. I was sweating and couldn’t think through the red hot pokers in my chest, so I did something I didn’t even do for Miso Korny– I poured it down the sink. A bad tasting beer is one thing, but one that is causing me crippling pain is an entirely different kettle of metaphors. The penultimate line in my notes, hastily scrawled as the burning racked my innards, is “bitterness is all there is”. The final line, a single word, in all capitals: SUFFER

Minoh Bloom: The Bottom Line

If you can handle the yeasty, funky beers like this, then be my guest. But I know some folks are like me, people who have trouble with a can of Suiyoubi no Neko from Lawsons. To them I say: Stay the god damn fuck away from this hellish beer. You will thank me.

I’m not saying this was a bad beer, I’m saying that it personally for me felt like I was going into cardiac arrest while drinking it. So, that’s a no from me!