Blanche de Chambly

Name: Blanche de Chambly
Style: Belgian white ale
ABV: 5.0%
Serving: 341ml bottle
Brewery: Unibroue
Location: Chambly, QC, Canada
Weblink: Blanche de Chambly

Right, end of April already. Crikey. Last day of the month so let's do something different. Let's head... east. Over the border into the adjoining nation of Quebec. While Unibroue might not be the best brewery in the small town of Chambly (that honour goes, in my estimation, to the superb Bedondaine & Bedons Ronds) it certainly is a very close runner up. Of two. Still, this was definitely my beer of the summer of 2008 and brings back many happy memories every time I crack open a bottle. Bottle conditioned, too, which is something the brewers of Ontario really need to take heed of. Now.

The beer pours very promisingly, with a beautiful pale amber-orange tone to the softly cloudy body, topped by a strident, thick head of large white bubbles. The aroma of the beer is dominated by a slightly cardboardy, yeast, citrus-and-corriander-seed florality (new word?). Unfortunately the first thing that strikes you when you put the beer to your lips is the aggressively carbonated nature of the brew. This is probably why I don't drink it so much these days, although looking forward to the summer I'll still probably be found on a terrace somewhere in Montreal with a glass in hand. Unibroue actually claim that this makes it similar to champagne... but I don't drink champagne in pint glasses. The flavours are instantly yeasty, with quite an urgent, slightly astringent note. This is swiftly followed by the banana and orange flavours you'd expect from a Belgian-style beer, underlain by the same sort of herbal and resinous notes that the nose provided. The beer finishes with little drama, and with only a lingering yeasty fruityness.

Flying Monkeys Hoptical Illusion

Name: Hoptical Illusion Almost Pale Ale
Style: Pale ale
ABV: 5.0%
Serving: 355ml bottle
Brewery: Flying Monkeys Craft Brewery
Location: Barrie, ON, Canada
Weblink: Coming soon... apparently.

So... normal service resumes after my patriotic digression (stands, hums GSTQ, salutes smartly, suppresses belch) and it's back to Ontario we go. A fairly new offering from a fairly new brewery. The Flying Monkeys outfit was formerly known as the rather more sober Robert Simpson Brewery, only changing name a couple of years ago. They are pioneering a range of experimental and very tasty beers, this one being possibly their best know. So, let's hop to it.

Hoptical Illusion pours a beautiful golden amber colour, as you'd expect from the full name it is a bit darker than your average pale ale, almost into proper amber territory. The head is a fizzy amalgam of large bubbles, but this subsides fairly quickly to the default ale light slick of fine froth. The aroma of the beer is solidly hoppy, with the distinctive medicinal resinous floral citrus mix that you'd expect from something with a name like this. There is something else there as well, but I can't quite hold on to it. Every time I get close it slips away again... I'll let you know if I ever track it down. In the mouth the first hit you get is of a refreshing lemonyness with a side order of gentle malty toffee. Then through come the flowers, and that resinous scent as well. A hint of black pine in the sun, with cool mountain air blowing through the boughs. Finally, as the beer slips past your tonsils, the hop notes slide sideways into a malty, yeasty rush that diffuses up into your nose.

Somewhere soon on here (I hope) you'll get a review of Beau's new I.P.Eh? beer. That one is a hop monster, and I think the name of this beer might lull people into thinking you'd be in for more of the same. However, that's all part of the illusion. If all you could do was smell the beer then you might be expecting a mouth puckering IPA, but what you end up with is a very nicely balanced, drinkable ale. Well done Monkeys, I hope they are paying you enough peanuts.

Old Speckled Hen

Name: Old Speckled Hen
Style: Bitter ale
ABV: 5.2%
Serving: 355ml bottle
Brewery: Morland Brewing
Location: Bury St. Edmunds, Suffolk, England
Weblink: Old Speckled Hen

So, St. George's Day. Well, I couldn't really review another Ontarian beer on Shakespere's birthday now, could I? So here we go with a beer that I have enjoyed for many years. Although it is better on draught in its original, lower alcohol form, this version seems to have been brewed with North American tastes in mind. Oh, and their expectations about how strong a beer should be. Also, it is the one and only British beer that is available within walking distance of my apartment. Yup, just Hen. There are three (count them, three!) Thai beers at the beer store, but just one British one. Very odd, although it does go a long way to illustrate the tastes of the average Joe on the Canadian streets. Well, at least it was this one and not ****ing Boddingtons.

The beer pours its usual fluid, deep coppery amber colour, with a fine, loose head of tan bubbles that dissipate within a couple of minutes of getting it into the glass. So far just what you'd expect from an English bitter. The scents that rise from those bubbles are very heavily dominated by butterscotch and citrus, a little like you'd expect a glass of orange juice with half a pack of Werthers Originals dissolved into it to smell. Behind that there is a yeasty freshness that reminds you yes, it was a beer you just poured. The flavours are, thankfully, quite a bit more complex though. There is still the citrus and toffee spine, but layered onto that are a fine bouquet of floral, hoppy notes, not unlike a herbaceous border on a warm summer's evening. Yes, definitely a hint of violets there. As the beer moves back in your mouth there is a crisp, clean dryness that develops. Not the astringent, medicinal dryness that seem to be popular right now, but a soft, bready dryness. The brewery ascribe this to their ancient strains of yeast, which I can believe.

However, this beer has been better. Since the Green King buyout in 1999 they seem to have developed this brand as their easy drinking bitter, masquerading as a quality craft product. It has softened off a lot, with much less of the yeasty character that it used to have, and more of the hoppy florals, balanced by an increase in the sweet tones in the flavour palette. This was a pioneer in getting good beers into the supermarket mainstream and for that every beer drinker should be grateful. But also be grateful that so many others have ridden on its coat tails and pushed what is possible and acceptable into the interesting realms that we now enjoy. Happy St. George's Day, cheers!

Heritage Blackcurrant Rye

Name: Blackcurrant Rye
Style: Dark lager with fruit
ABV: 4.5%
Serving: 650ml bottle
Brewery: Heritage Brewing Limited
Location: Ottawa, ON, Canada
Weblink: Heritage Brewing seasonal beer

Yet another of the winter leftovers, but this time we're bringin' it on home! Pyropette and myself bought a couple of bottles of this directly from the brewery right here in Ottawa. Well, it is only a bus ride from work and a bus ride from home. We've had a few glasses of their regular Premium Lager and, on tap, it is very pleasant. Their dark lager however... well, not so keen. A bit sour and with a very odd set of overly subdued flavours. Perhaps I'll review that at some point in the future, but let's stick with the blackcurrant for now, brewed in November using local blackcurrants.

The beer pours very thin, and even with a fair amount of abuse produces no head to speak of, just a few fine bubbles at the periphery. The beer has almost no effervescence, just a slight pétillance at the edges of the tongue. This is a common failing of Heritage's bottled beers, I find, and might be related to the softness of Ottawa's water supply. The nose is quite sour, with a slightly unpleasant sulphurous and burnt toast hint. However, underlying this is a solidly dense blackcurranty fruityness. The first sips follow the same pattern, with most initial taste dominated by the sour rye malts, slightly over-toasted I feel, with blackcurrant only coming through very late. Gradually, as you drink through a glassful, however, these sour grain flavours disappear and all you are left with is a slightly tart but very richly blackcurranty and refreshing beer. There is still some lingering sour mash flavour, but it doesn't detract too much. The aftertaste, unfortunately, reverts to the slightly vegetal sour scents, with a hint of toasted grains. All in, when it was fresh this beer was a pleasant, if unimpressive, fruity dark lager. It is let down by the sour notes which don't help it, and it hasn't aged gracefully over the last five months. This suggests that it should be drunk young, but it feels like it would be a much better summer beer. However, I suppose when you are brewing with fresh local ingredients you have to take them when they are in season.

Amsterdam Big Wheel

Name: Big Wheel Deluxe Amber
Style: Amber ale
ABV: 5.0%
Serving: 341ml bottle
Brewery: Amsterdam Brewing Co. Limited
Location: Toronto, ON, Canada
Weblink: Amsterdam Beer

Just spotted this in the delightful confines of the Beer Store. Not always a propitious location for an ad hoc beer purchase (for non-Ontarians, this place is one of only two major chains that sell beer here, and tends to major in bulk purchases of cheap swill) but I've been meaning to pick up an Amsterdam beer for a while, and their newest offering seemed like a reasonable start. Besides, I had, ooh, at least four bucks burning a hole in my pocket from bottle returns.

Oop... opening the boxed six pack reveals pale green glass bottles and a distinctly funky, summer and yoof orientated branding. Light green glass, such as you might find for a white wine bottle, is not something I'm accustomed to see outside of the lager shelves. Not that I'm complaining, you understand, in fact I'm a cyclist so anything with a bike on gets my vote. However, it does point toward this being Amsterdam's attempt at a populist beer. Continuing with visual impressions, the beer pours quite nicely, with a dense, thick, off-white head sitting on top of a crisply clear, deep copper-orange body. The head lingers for a fair old while too, taking at least half the glass to disappear.

In terms of flavour, well yes, this is definitely the beer that Amsterdam is hoping will turn a few of the lager-drinking summer terasse/patio crowd on to something darker. There isn't much of anything going on; some bitterness, but not a lot, some maltiness, but not a lot, and some floral hoppy character, but not a lot. Underlying all this is a lingering, softening sweetness, with a backnote hint of wheaty caramel. I think the correct damning-with-faint-praise oneophile term is "approachable". Not that this is always a bad thing, just make sure that it is what you are looking for in your beer. This would indeed be a great beer to consume in quantity (although, as so often unfortunately, the strength of this beer militates against that somewhat) say on a terasse with friends on a long, balmy summer's evening.

Barley Days Cherry Porter

Name: Yuletide Cherry Porter
Style: Porter
ABV: 5.5%
Serving: 341ml bottle
Brewery: Barley Days Brewery
Location: Prince Edward County, ON, Canada
Weblink: Barley Days

So, a few leftovers from Christmas indulgence. Got to get these drunk before we stock up on the summer brews! So Sunday afternoon, Pyropette concocting her delicious ribs and working up to superb, cheesy cornbread. Ah... what could be nicer with that than sipping at some more of Ontario's craft brewers' fine product?

The beer pours very dark, with only a hint of oaky brown at the edges, topped with a dense head of fine creamy-beige bubbles. The aroma is a pleasant, if slightly odd, combination of toasty, marmitey malt and maraschino cherry. The over-toasted malt bitterness (not a hop bitterness) carries through into the first sip, but rapidly gives way to a more coffee-tobacco feel. After this the cherry starts to make its presence felt, with a sharply sour red cherry taste coming through as the beer hits the back of your mouth. After swallowing the cherry slowly dissipates and is replaces by a wet oak and musty leather aftertaste. Now that, that I could live without. Up until this point I had been enjoying this beer. The sour fruit notes I'd usually associate with a lambic transplanted into a dark bitter, curious and very tasty. But that lingering hint of water-damaged library that finishes the drink isn't so pleasant. The solution? Keep sipping!

UPDATE: Feb. 6, 2011. Ok, so I know it has been a while since I wrote this, but I have finally managed to try this beer on tap... and what a revelation. Much, much, much better than the bottled variety, and it really does make me wonder about the abilities of the LCBO where it comes to beer sales. The beer was full-flavoured and sprightly. It still has the toasted malt tones, but these hedge more to the tobacco end of the scale. The cherry comes through smooth and powerful, with a mouth-filling sweet and sour cascade of red cherry goodness. And the finish? Pure cherry with a hint of coffee, no bookishness to be had anywhere...

Southern Tier Oat

Name: Blackwater Series Oat
Style: Imperial stout
ABV: 11.0%
Serving: 650ml bottle
Where: Pub Italia, Ottawa
Brewery: Southern Tier Brewing Company
Location: Lakewood, NY, USA
Weblink: Southern Tier beers

Just to round out Friday night, before I get too far behind, here's the other mighty Imperial stout on offer at Pub Italia from Southern Tier. Just for research purposes, you understand. This beer forms an interesting counterpoint to the Young's Double Chocolate stout below.

The beer pours very dark, pretty much jet black with only hints of brown, and fairly treacly, with only a very thin deep brown head. The flavour palette is dominated by strident burnt toast and bootstrap molasses tastes, with a slightly spicy and caramel toffee backnote. These morph gradually into a very similar tobacco and dark chocolate flavours to that of the Chokolat stout from the same brewery. In contrast to their Chokolat, however, you can definitely taste much of the 11% alcohol that resides here.Their shared parentage is very clearly shown here. The aftertaste is predominantly a similarly spicy and toasty flavour to those of the main palette, but that linger for a very long time indeed.

Young's Double Chocolate Stout

Name: Luxury Double Chocolate Stout
Style: Stout
ABV: 5.2%
Serving: 500ml bottle
Where: Pub Italia, Ottawa
Brewery: Wells & Young's Brewing Company
Location: Bedford, Beds., UK
Weblink: Wells & Young's

Well this one was mostly intended as a blast from the past, to reacquaint myself with a beer that used to rank up in my top five. Once upon a time, in a land far, far away, I used to live less than half a mile from the Young's brewery in Wandsworth, London. Walking to work on those mornings when they were mashing was always a treat, as my route took me straight past the brewery walls and the whole town was infused with rich, malty smells. Sadly that is all gone now, with brewing operations moved out to the Charles Wells brewery site in Bedforshire, following the merger of brewing operations by the two companies. I have nothing at all against Wells, in fact their Bombardier and Banana Bread beers are two that I have enjoyed on many, many occasions, but I can't help feeling that that DCS seems to have become a touch more "Wellsy" over the last couple of years, which seems a shame. mind you, you have to bear in mind that leading up to this beer I had indulged in another of Southern Tier's enormous Blackwater Series stouts, including the Choklat mentioned below.

So, the beer pours fairly thin (again, this is probably relative, but my frame of reference was skewed!) with a dark black-brown colour and a frothy tan-coloured head. Looking good so far. As with many beers in North America, this one was served a touch on the cold side, so the aromas took a while to ease out. I get that the majority of Americans drink piss water that needs to be chilled to within an inch of freezing to make it bearable, but what is the excuse for Canadians? Seriously folks, ease up a bit on the temperatures. Ales should be served at cellar temperatures, that means 8-12°C, not completely frigid. Anyway, I digress; once it had warmed a little the scents of sharp malts (mostly the pale ale and crystal I'm guessing) and a bitter cocoa note dominated the aromas. In the mouth, the first thing I noticed was that this beer seems almost artificially carbonated in comparison to the Southern Tier. The sort of aggressive, fizzy effervescence that you normally associate with lagers. This seems to impart a slightly metallic tang to the front of your mouth. After this more typical beery flavours wash through, led by a nicely toasty, dark malt and again the bitter note of cocoa. There is also a certain amount of yeastiness coming through which I didn't remember, but seems to be a fairly transient thing. In the middle of your mouth things start turning bad, with an unpleasant, burnt rubber acridness coming to the fore. Fortunately this is fairly swiftly superceded by the chocolate finally making its presence felt, with a lingeringly off-sweet dark chocolate taste dominating your senses as the beer swills down your throat.

Overall I was a touch disappointed with this beer. Maybe my tastes have changed, or maybe its this ineffable "Wellsyess" that I mentioned, but Double Chocolate Stout seems to be more heavily carbonated and sightly more processed in nature than I remember, so I probably won't be repeating this trial again for a while.

Dylan's Killer Red

Name: Dylan's Killer Red
Style: Irish ale
ABV: 5.0%
Serving: 20oz pint
Where: Pub Italia, Ottawa
Brewery: Church-Key Brewers
Location: Campbellford, ON, Canada
Weblink: Pub Italia

So, back once again to Pub Italia on a Friday afternoon. Well... it's just so close to work that going further afield for worse beer, just for a change of scene, seems like a waste of time. Besides, I like it there! So, this is the house ale at Pub Italia. It is brewed on their behalf by Church-Key down at Cambellford and Pub Italia claims exclusivity. However, the brewery also distributes the same beer to a couple of other pubs and restaurants in Ontario, albeit under different names.

The beer arrived at the table with a centimetre of open, frothy, yeasty foam riding on top of the obligatory deep red-brown ale. The beer is very much in the traditional Irish or northern England "best" bitter style, with a very caramel malt and bread yeast dominated aroma, perhaps with a slight hint of apple at the back. The head dies away fairly quickly, leaving a pint with only moderate effervescence. The flavours are again very much of the type. There is a still a very smooth malty palette, perhaps sweeter than most, overlain by unbaked bread flavours. To the middle of the mouth a slightly sour malt tone, with a return of a slightly green apple tang. The aftertaste returns once again to a lingering toasty biscuityness once the sour notes have faded. The mouth feel is fairly thin throughout, and the beer, when cold, has a pleasingly refreshing feel. However, when it warms it starts to be dominated by the sour tones. This is a beer to be drunk fast and in quantity. Therefore it is a shame that it rates up at 5% ABV. Were this beer a percentage point or two lower in alcohol it would make a very handy session ale for a warm summer evening. Unfortunately with 5% it is too strong for that, and if you are forced to sip then there are plenty of other, better, beers available that fill that niche.

Southern Tier Choklat Stout

Name: Blackwater Series Imperial Choklat Stout
Style: Imperial stout
ABV: 11.0% (9% quoted on the import label...)
Serving: 650ml bottle
Brewery: Southern Tier Brewing Company
Location: Lakewood, NY, USA
Weblink: Southern Tier Beers

Just to prove that I do drink beers from outside Ontari-airy-airy-oh, here's a monstrous offering from western New York's Southern Tier brewery. Bought from the specialist cabinet at, yes, Pub Italia in Ottawa, it was a bit of a treat at $20 for a single 650 ml bottle. But hey, sometimes you gotta push the boat out.

The beer pours thick and resinous, with an oily sheen and thin, dark brown head. The aromas that pour off the beer are, well, fairly un-beer-like. The first scent that you detect is a slightly milky sweetness, followed by burnt coffee notes and a thick, rich chocolate undertow. And that's pretty much how it tastes as well; as my drinking companion put it, "like alcoholic Nesquik!" There is obviously an awful lot of fine, dark chocolate and rich cocoa gone into each bottle of this mighty brew, and these have swamped out all but the most bombastic elements of the malt's own flavour profile. Gradually these do ease their way through from the back, however, with a pleasing tobacco and black coffee toastyness gradually filling your mouth as the chocolate fades away. The one thing you can't taste - surprisingly, given its high ABV - is alcohol, although you can feel its warming presence in your throat, and see its effects in the way that the room begins to shimmer after a while!

One of the nicest parts of this beer is the way that it feels in your mouth. There is a robust, voluminous richness, that is tempered and enhanced by a smooth, silky feel as the beer slides towards the back of your mouth. This beer is certainly an experience, but not one I can see myself indulging in too frequently. It does pretty much what it says on the bottle label, but there isn't much complexity here and after a while this means that the beer loses its attraction. The 650 ml bottle is probably enough for 2-3 people to share but one on your own is a bit much. So take a friend of two, crack open a bottle, sip it from a snifter, and let the chocolate wash over you.

Trafalgar Oak Aged Rye

Name: Oak Aged Rye Premium Ale
Style: Bitter ale (Roggenbier)
ABV: 5.0%
Serving: 650ml bottle
Brewery: Trafalgar Ales & Meads
Location: Oakville, ON, Canada
Weblink: Trafalgar Ales & Meads

An off-the-cuff LCBO purchase, this one. A hefty bottle with a distinctive green label. I'll admit that I hadn't heard of the brewery, let alone the beer, before I picked this one up, but always willing to try something new I stuffed one into an already heaving basket. So...

The beer is very low in effervescence, and pours with almost no head despite fairly brutal treatment. The colour is a very pleasing, burnished copper, with a very slight sediment haze. The beer's nose has a promising blend of appley-citrus notes and a subdued caramel backbone, overlain by a rye-sour tang. At this point I'm hopeful. But... (you could see the 'but' coming there, couldn't you?) where'd that all go in the mouth? Ok, so there is dry florality, but that disappears pretty darn fast, and a softly lingering toasty vanilla (the oak, I assume) is all you are left with. All in all this is pretty disappointing and thin. The brewery was apparently set up in 1993, so you'd think that they would know how to put together a cracking beer with the combination of interesting grains and expensive oak aging, but frankly I've had more interesting homebrew than this. Drat.

Hop City Barking Squirrel

Name: Barking Squirrel Lager
Style: Heller bock
ABV: 5.0%
Serving: 20oz shaker
Where: Pub Italia, Ottawa
Brewery: Hop City
Location: Brampton, ON, Canada
Weblink: Barking Squirrel Lager

So, another lager. How unlike me... is must be the time of year I guess. Anyway, this review is culled from a posting the I made at a beer rating site. Why am I repeating it here? Well, for completeness for one, but also as the other reviews I have read on said rating site seemed very skewed. I know that we all like to tell ourselves that we drink 'good' beer because we simply like it more, but there does seem to be a slightly classier than thou pretension in some quarters too. It seems that the harder a beer is to find and the smaller the brewery the more certain people seem to like the beer; the reverse is also true. So ok Hop City isn't really a microbrewer, being part of the considerably larger (and commercially-orientated) Moosehead concern, but I tend to take things as I find them. Moosehead also own 50% of Montreal's superb McAuslan Brewery, so they clearly know how to give their subsidiaries enough freedom to be distinctive. I've had plenty of crappy beer brewed by microbreweries and brewpubs, and some really classy offerings from big operations.

For a start, some have accused this beer of only pouring with a "thin, browny head"; that’s your barman’s fault. Go to a pub where they know how to pull pints and keep their lines clean. Every time I have been handed a pint of Barking Squirrel it has had 1-2cm of fine, light foam, sat jauntily atop a pleasingly deep orange/amber body, with moderate effervescence. While pretty hoppy for a dark lager, it isn’t a hop monster in the currently fashionable ilk. There is a burnt caramel/toffee sweetness here that is nicely balanced (balance being the keyword...) by a gently bittering, citrusy florality to the back of the mouth and in the aftertaste. However, this isn’t one of the trendy, mouth-puckeringly bitter, overhopped "macho" IPAs that are cropping up all over the place, and with a brewery name like this I think some people were expecting more. Hops are great. I’ve loved hops for many years, but just because that isn’t all you can taste doesn’t mean that it fails. In fact, its balance is a mark distinctly in its favour. Another dark mark seems to be that its appearance is goading people into believing that this is a bitter and are judging it in that context. Yes it is pretty approachable, possibly even commercial, for a (pseudo-)craft beer, and it may not be a world-beater, but levelling dull, repetitious, unthinking comments at it is far more "meh" than this perfectly good dark lager.

Creemore Springs Traditional Pilsner

Name: Traditional Pilsner
Style: Pilsner
ABV: 5.3%
Serving: 341ml bottle
Brewery: Creemore Springs
Location: Creemore, ON, Canada
Weblink: Creemore Springs Traditional Pilsner

Soo... how to get to grips with this beer (b)log? Do I want to make it cool and clinical, or a bit more chatty. It is only supposed to be an aide memoir so I guess the beer review will form a large chunk of it. Hmm, thinking out loud in text, is that healthy? Who knows...

Anyway, Creemore Pilsner. I have to admit that I haven't been overly impressed by the Creemore beers that I have tried in the past; they just seem a little lacking in class. The fact that they seem to have fallen for the current LCBO con that "great beers come in cans" might be something to do with it. Sadly, we in Ontario are being told, by people who should know better, that cans are a good way to package craft beers. I guess the LCBO's taste buds are so shot from years of drinking Coors that they can't taste the can taint any more. They are wrong. Easy to handle, easy to transport, and offering mix-and-match at the store seem to be their prime motivations, not preserving the beer's taste. Still, this has been sufficient to put me off Creemore before now. However, after trying a Creemore on draught (big shout to the increasing number of Ottawa pubs carrying craft beer on draught!) a couple of weeks back and being mildly impressed, I thought I'd invest in 12 bottles of their Traditional Pilsner, to see if they changed my mind.

So, the beer pours well, with a light, open head. It has a rich, amber colour and is vigorously effervescent. As far as it goes, this is a very straight pilsner. Disappointingly the aromas are a bit flat, with only a slightly hoppy bitterness being noticeable. However, I'd point out here that my usual tastes are for much darker beers than this, and so my viewpoint is slightly skewed! As far as flavour goes, the beer starts slightly - but only slightly - sweet, with a pale malt tone, but very rapidly switches to a robust, hoppy, almost metallic bitterness. The finish is biscuity, with some remianing malt and hop aromatics swirling up my nose. As it says on the label, this is a traditional, classy pilsner. I'm not really in a position to judge the absolute quality of this particular pilsner as, frankly, I don't drink that much of the stuff. But from what I have tasted so far, this is likely to be one of the better options for a cool summer sip. If I'm honest, I actually prefer the beer's aftertaste to its actual taste. It is definitely a beer that I could see myself nursing a pint of on a terrasse; just sipping every now and again to top up the lingering malty-yeasty aftertastes. Unfortunately, I can see that leading to a nasty, warm half-pint. We'll see. For now, one to enjoy on the hot days.