Red Racer Summit Speakeasy
Central City Brewers + Distillers

355ml can - day 9 of the 2018 Parallel 49/Red Racer Alpine Adventure Pack. An Extra Pale Ale, made with orange peel, cherries, and whisky - so, essentially an Old Fashioned.

This beer pours a clear, bright medium bronzed amber colour, with three fingers of puffy, rocky, and bubbly ecru head, which leaves some scattered cloud form lace around the glass as it quickly evaporates.

It smells of gritty and grainy cereal malt, some bitter orange and cherry fruitiness, vanilla-forward barrel notes, spicy whisky, and rather faint earthy, musty, and floral green hop bitters. The taste is grainy and bready caramel malt, a mixed fruit bowl essence, more vanilla-heavy oaken notes, rye whisky, and some well-understated leafy, musty, and herbal hoppiness.

The carbonation is pretty tame in its bored-seeming frothiness, the body a decent middleweight, and generally smooth, with nothing really getting in the way of a swell time at this point in the game. It finishes off-dry, the malt and whisky character presiding.

Overall - well, this one starts out emulating the famous cocktail quite nicely, but then the fruitiness disappears, and we are left with a watered-down whisky experience. An interesting conceit, but it doesn't work out in the end.