Snowdrift
Central City Brewers + Distillers

 

 

330ml bottle, day 21 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. An 'amber honey wheat ale' - I guess that they had to add those last two chemicals to stop refermentation in the bottle - and I am a-ok with that!

This beer pours a slightly hazy, medium copper amber colour, with three fingers of puffy, finely foamy, and mildly bubbly ecru head, which leaves some poorly constructed tiered cake profile lace around the glass as it slowly bleeds away.

It smells of grainy and biscuity caramel malt, a lesser breakfast cereal wheaten sweetness, clover honey, a hint of buttered bread, and very, very subtle earthy, leafy, and floral green hop bitters. The taste is semi-sweet, bready and doughy caramel malt, sugary wheat cereal (Honey Nut Cheerios - and I know that's mostly oats), more buttery cracker notes, and some still ethereal musty, leafy, and floral hoppiness.

The carbonation is damned-near non-existent in its fleeting frothiness, the body a solid middleweight, and mostly smooth, as those varied sugary vectors go the long yard at this particular juncture. It finishes on the sweet side, all malt and honey, all the time.

Overall - this is just too saccharine to encourage repeat rounds, I'm even having trouble deciding whether to drain the rest into my diabetes-tempting gullet, or the basement bathroom sink. Either way, Snowdrift needs a whole hell of a lot more balance to be considered enjoyable.