Archer
Horny Goat Brewing Co.

Horny Goat pours a dark brown color with a small, long lasting, lacing head. Aroma has a nice mellow apple cider aroma. Taste has a nice autumn rich, apple cider flavor, then a strange harsh bitterness, with hints of chocolate. Good feel, a bit watery body. Overall, nice attempt, but this beer just doesn't jive.

 

 

This is a middle of the road beer. Smells like a brown ale, but then there is some apple in there too. Once it started to warm up more, it seemed to get sweeter. This was not a good thing. Not a bad beer, just don't let it get too warm.

 

Very reddish amber color beer with an off white head that leaves a little lacing. Smells like an apple pie. Apple, brown sugar, cinnamon and yeasty pie crust. Taste is sickly sweet apple pie in a glass. The cider is tasty but sweet and overpowers the taste of the brown ale hiding underneath. I like the concept but not really the execution.

This beer pours a muddy brown with a rather large but structureless head. The aroma leads with slightly smoky malts, caraway, and a yeast hint. The flavor leads with a sweet banana bread profile, followed by stunted caramel apple flavor, burn sugar, and a slightly sour aftertaste. the mouthfeel is a bit syrupy. Overall this is not a super impressive beer, but it is a nice, uncomplicated change. Very quaffable, this is not a beer to treat yourself with, but it is a nice beer to relax with.

Served from the can in a Trooper shaker pint glass.

Y'know, I'm not entirely sure why I keep giving Horny Goat beers any of my already limited attention. They have never wowed me, and, even worse, they've tended to be downright terrible at times. I must have some kind of masochistic streak or somethin'... Anyway, this stuff pours a clear tawny-topaz topped by a finger of straight-up dirty foam. The nose sounds a warning, cardboard soaked in vaguely-perceptible old spiced apple cider lazily blooming upward. The taste fulfills the smell's harbinging (sure, why not turn that into a verb, eh?) and then some by delivering forth some rank, bottom-shelf, radiator-aged calvados mixed with a bit of those brown sugar graham crackers I enjoy so much on their own. The body is a light medium, with a limp carbonation and a slick-ish feel. Overall, the can tells me that this beer packs all the apple cider flavor I want in a brown ale "with none of the drawbacks". In a tangential way, this is true, as it shows me I want no apple cider flavor in my brown ales: It's all drawbacks. I may not be wanting to retch right now, but I am in no way pleased with this particular selection.