Nimbus Scottish-Style Export Ale
Nimbus Brewing Company

Deep garnet-tinted amber with a low-lying beige head that remains for several minutes as a skin across the glass.
Faint scents of biscuit malt and toffee, along with even tracer aromas of chocolate, smoke, and blackberries.
In the mouth, malt manifests with nods of caramel, berries,toasted biscuits, and toffee. It balances sweet notions with much drier ones, and actually probably leans more dry. Light dustings of ash and cocoa preempt a semi-lactic yeast inflection. Hopping is minor, but adds specks of pepper at the close.
Light bodied with a light but steady carbonation. It rushes through the mouth with little heft, no linger, and no memory.
It's drinkable, but generally uninteresting as the malt never congeals and it never decides on a direction or featured flavor.

Pours with a thin, frothy, pale tan colored head. Brilliantly clear, deep reddish to concentrated amber color. The aroma is a nice mix of caramelized malt, toast grain and lightly herbal hop; Aromas of biscuit-like malt and cracker like grain provides a slight drying effect to offset the sweeter malt character. The sweet malt aromatics remind me of a mix of rich caramel malts, a touch of rich fruitiness and even a touch of toffee.

Sweet, without being cloying; malty, yet has a hop character to it as well. Herbal hop flavors with a fairly solid bitterness to it (despite the advertised 15 IBU). The dominant character is that of caramelized fruit; berry notes, perhaps a touch of citrus. The finish has a nice rich maltiness to it with a caramelized, fruit accented sweetness and a touch of viscous heft that lets the beer stick to the palate. Very nicely quaffable, the beer does have some body to it (not surprising given the residual malt sweetness). A touch of toasted malt character in the finish seems to add just a hint of roast, though this is very soft and I may just be imagining it.

I am quite surprised by how hoppy this is; I almost wonder if my taste buds are playing tricks on me. Either way though this is a really tasty, lower alcohol brew. The beer is really hitting the spot right now. I could easily quaff a few pints of this in an evening (and in fact did).