Red Racer Red Ale
Central City Brewers + Distillers

473ml can - made with English malts and PNW hops.

The beer pours a clear, bright medium reddish amber colour, with four flabby fingers of puffy, rocky, and somewhat fizzy beige head, which leaves some decent flock of seagulls pattern lace around the glass as it slowly but surely abates.

It smells of semi-sweet, bready and doughy caramel malt, some mixed domestic citrus and pome fruitiness, further sugary toffee notes, and plain leafy, weedy, and piney green hop bitters. The taste is gritty and grainy caramel malt, biscuity toffee squares, baked red apples, faint generic citrus rind, some damp minerality, and more earthy, herbal, and piney hoppiness.

The carbonation is fairly restrained in its ennui-stricken frothiness, the body a solid middleweight, and generally smooth, with perhaps just a touch of hop acridity taking things down a notch or so from the ideal. It finishes off-dry, the biscuity malt showing the most lingering gusto.

Overall - this offering certainly delivers on its promise of West Coast meeting Jolly Old England. Hoppy and malty, always a fine combination! It's also crisp (just like that deceptively sunny Fall day out there) and easy enough to put back. Worth checking out.