Crabbie’s have been brewing for a couple of hundred years, and this offering from Glasgow in Scotland is certainly well rounded, and full of flavour. It is a ginger beer, so obviously has tastes of ginger, but Crabbies have also added other fruit and spices into the blend, and matured the beer to produce a very smooth tasting brew, with many pleasant tastes and aromas.

I don’t know whether to review this as a beer or not. As other ginger beers that are available in Australia, this far exceeds the Blue Tongue Ginger beer (which I haven’t seen for years).

There are many complex aromas to this beer. As well as the obvious, there are blackberries, apple, cinnamon, some small amount of hops (I think), and maybe some nutmeg. This is more of an apple and blackberry crumble than a beer, but wow! does it jump out of the glass at you.

When you drink it, you get the initial apple and cinnamon tastes, then the ginger hits as an aftertaste that is neither too strong nor too placid. This is an alcohol ginger beer, so you do get an alcohol taste, but not too much, it is really well balanced.

Overall, this is a very well rounded ginger beer with some nice overtones of other fruit and flavours. The sweetness is well tempered with the beer flavours, and I am not sure how much you could drink before the sweetness becomes dominant. It would be great if it had more body in the middle of the drink, as it lacks something between the fruit and the ginger hits, but otherwise a superb drink.