Dundee Honey Brown Lager

We picked this up on a whim at one dundee honey brown lagerof those little stores attached to a gas station. This particular store has an owner with a thing for Washington wine, so we always stop to look when we're in the neighborhood. He had a stack of 12 packs of Dundee Honey Brown, and, curious, since I'd never seen the beer or heard of the brewery, I went home with a 12 pack for $9.00. The Dundee Brewing Company is in Rochester, N.Y. Their Dundee Honey Brown Lager is their "founding" brew, their first beer introduced in 1994. They're not the micro brewery they appear though; they're owned by the larger Rochester New York beer brewer High Falls Brewing Company, the seventh largest brewer of beer in the United States and the brewers of Genesee Beer, and importers via their subsidiary Allied Brands.

This is a lovely beer. It's a session beer, (ABV 4.5%) but it's perfect for fall; a light brown lager style, and yes, you can taste and smell the honey, though both the aroma and the taste are faintly reminiscent of caramel. It really is made with honey; specifically, with natural clover honey from Manitoba. This is a beer I'd love to try with oatmeal cookies, or in making whole wheat honey bread. Its color is a deep gold, like the darker sorts of blueberry honey, and the honey is just a hint, mellowed by the hops and light malt. There's a decent head of foam as well. This is a good beer for an afternoon of conviviality, especially on a lovely fall afternoon. I'm not the only person to like it, either; this beer won a Gold Award at the 2004 World Beer Cup in the Special Honey Lager or Ale Category. There are a fair number of enthusiastic reviews online, as well.

Given that Dundee's Honey Brown is made with actual, natural honey, it seems particularly appropriate that in 2008 they are donating a portion of every Dundee beer sold in the United States to the Foundation for the Preservation of Honey Bees, a charitable research fondation in support of efforts to eradicate the distressing and poorly understood CCD, or Colony Collapse Disorder which is killing honey bees in large numbers.