A Year Old Bell's Oberon Ale

This year's first batch of Bell's Oberon, a summer wheat ale, comes out next week I believe, but just recently having had a year old bottle sent to me I decided to get to it sooner than later. Bell's has a really cool batch number on the back of every bottle and when you log into their website you can type it in and it'll tell you exactly when this bottle was packaged. This bottle was packaged on May 10, 2007- yeah way too long ago for a 5.8% ABV wheat beer.

Unfortunately the aged showed. However it wasn't bad. In fact it was fairly good, just disappointing in that I realized how good this must be fresh. The wheat isn't huge but the yeast seems to be. I get a banana nut aroma from them along with some noticeably faded hops that left a small bit of bitterness. This is probably a fairly hoppy wheat bear- it reminded me almost of a pale ale. I'll be trying to get some fresh bottles soon so I can enjoy them during the next Summer of Beer.