Red Racer Wet Hopped Pale Ale
Central City Brewers + Distillers

 

1L howler from the southside Wine and Beyond in Edmonton, for a very reasonable sub-10 dollar 'shelf' tag in these days of skyrocketing brew prices.

This beer pours a clear, medium copper amber colour, with two fingers of puffy, lazily foamy, and generally bubbly off-white head, which leaves some random cloudy and dried sudsy lace around the glass as things evenly subside.

It smells of pungent mixed citrus fruit (white grapefruit, mandarin orange, and lime zest), grainy caramel malt, a soft earthy chalkiness, and more leafy, floral, and piney hop acridity. The taste is semi-sweet, bready caramel malt, more muddled, but still appreciable citrus pithiness, a lessened hard water flinty note, and some steady leafy, weedy, and yeah, wet grass hoppiness.

The carbonation is very light and generally just supportive in its plain frothiness, the body a capable middleweight, and mostly smooth, with a wee clamminess picking and prodding my palate, which is predisposed to just look the other fucking way here. It finishes off-dry, the malt holding fast in its defence of the motherland, while the literal flavour of the month hops do well to not completely fade out early.

It's been a while since I've had the original Red Racer Pale Ale, but even so, this one does nothing to besmirch its predecessor's memory, even coming closer to the fault line between pale and India (for some reason I'm hearing Sean Connery in my head right now) ale. Nice and hoppy, but not too much, y'know? Also, this is listed as 7% ABV both here, and on the label from LD - but I'm sorely doubting the veracity of that.