Red Racer Low Rider Sugarplum
Central City Brewers + Distillers

 

 

 

330ml bottle, day 11 of 'The Great White Wonder Adventure Pack', a collaboration between Central City and Parallel 49 to provide a Beer Advent (I can say that, even if they can't) holiday experience. Made with plum juice, lactose, and vanilla.

This beer pours a clear, bright medium salmon amber colour, with two fingers of puffy, loosely foamy, and somewhat fizzy pale pink head, which leaves absolutely nothing in the way of lace anywhere near the glass as it quickly vanishes.

It smells of semi-sweet, bready and doughy cereal malt, vanilla cookies, sugary milk, and a faint black stone fruitiness. The taste is gritty and grainy pale malt, slightly tart lactose, stale vanilla beans, soured plums, a hint of earthy yeast, and some ethereal leafy, weedy, and floral green hop bitters.

The carbonation is average in its palate-pleasing frothiness, the body a decent middleweight, and mostly smooth, with just a touch of tartness making a few unwelcome tremors here. It finishes off-dry, the malt, vanilla, and plum milkshake characters presiding.

Overall - well, this is another interesting attempt to emulate a traditional Yuletide confection, and they've done well to reproduce what I might imagine a sugarplum to be. More sweet than sour, but balanced enough in the end.