Is this the greatest brown ever or just the greatest for mid-October when the first nights of frost are here?
Tight tiny tan cream foam and rim over fairly active chestnut ale. Luscious on the nose - grape juice and cocoa powder. Raisin, date and fig in the malt with a fresh fruit juice core followed by the reality of sub-twig hop structure. Then as the beer opens, nuts - hazelnutiness without the intrusion of a insipid syrup to hammer you with the note. The merest nod to smoke perhaps making it like a hopped Scots ale. Yeast is heavy cream. At 5.6% likely too much for a session though everything else about it screams session.
Here are the brewer's notes. A very surprising 7% of BAers do not like.
Comments
Ian in Cowtown - October 18, 2006 11:00 am
Greatest brown ever? Ah, the pangs of regret!
I saw this beer on a recent business trip to Los Angeles. It looked very inviting, but I passed it up in favour of some Stone and Bear Republic.
I was not unhappy with those choices, but I always wonder about "the beer not taken". I'll stick this on the short list for my next trip.
Alan - October 18, 2006 4:51 pm
The interesting thing is how this is not a big beer or an break through style but just a nice comforting easy-going brown that has all the browninesses that make browns so brown. And there are always beers missed or, worse, beers not noted down that you later regret.