Pine Grove Lager
Ham's Restaurant & Brewhouse

Pine Grove is the latest of brewmaster T.L. Adkisson's "little experiments"--this offering revealing itself as a crisp cool lager thoroughly drowned in hops. The on-tap cheat sheet at the bar claims the ingredient bill of "the standard lager" (I'm guessing that it's likely Ham's own award-winning all-malt 'Sunfest' recipe), only this brewing is augmented--well, maybe "Bastardized" is a better descriptor-- with heavy handfuls of Amarillo, Glacier, Chinook, Cascade, and Summit hops. The resultant brew is a throat-parching, lip-smacking, tooth-melting little snapper and is hoppy as all Hell. Woo hoo!

A fresh growler pour into my Kolsch cylinder yields a sparkling-clear brassy-gold body capped by a slumping white tower of soft foam. As the head slowly relaxes, spongy sheets of puffy lacing coat the inside of the glass. It looks like a Sunfest, but there endeth the similarities...

The smell of the brew is spicy and sticky evergreen with orange zest, lime juice and unopened green pine cones crushed and macerated with fresh garden herbs. The brash, vegetal, oily, grassy aroma is pleasantly mellowed by mild toasted malts and spritzed with a whiff of caramel candy.

The taste is mild and grainy with semi-sweet maltiness, scorched crisp and patted dry with powdered evergreen rosin and sticky snipped pine needles. A twist of bitter grassy citrus oil lingers atop a note of mild dark caramel, sucking out the sweetness and replacing it with pungent pine-grassy bitterness. The finish is long-lasting and Mojave Desert-style dry.

The drink is crisp and perfectly carbonated with a smooth medium malty body near to "too frail" to support the massive hop load piled atop the recipe. Each pull from the glass is so damned dry and bitter it inspires another swig to quench the arid aftertaste, enhancing the brew's drinkability to a level damned near "greatness".