Red Racer Lemon Groove
Central City Brewers + Distillers

 

 

650ml bottle - a 'single hop golden ale', the single hop in question being the Lemon Drop varietal, as if this brew's name wasn't hint enough.

This beer pours a clear, bright medium copper amber colour, with three fingers of puffy, loosely foamy, and bubbly off-white head, which leaves some gnarled tree growth lace around the glass as it slowly ebbs away.

It smells of bready and crackery pale malt, muddled domestic citrus, a hardly distinct musty lemon essence, some mild estery yeastiness, and more leafy, earthy, and floral green hop bitters. The taste is gritty and grainy pale malt, a kind of sour generic citrus thing (maybe there's lemon in there, it's really hard to tell), some musty yeast, wet dirt, and more plain weedy, floral, and dead leafy verdant hoppiness.

The carbonation is fairly thorough in its taciturn frothiness, the body a so-so middleweight, and sort of smooth, but for an underlying acridity that seems to be from the hops. It finishes trending dry, the malt starting to wonder what it has gotten itself into, as it heavily considers its exit strategy.

Overall, something seems murpy with this one, the hops are just too muted and musty for what I was expecting (they're no Chasin' Freshies 2015, that's for sure). It's not an actually bad offering, but it just doesn't deliver on the promised goods - I, for one, ain't groovin'.