Jalapeño Pilsner
Spice Trade Brewing / Yak & Yeti

I saw this beer sitting in a local cooler a few times. I think a lot of people think that brewing a craft beer is like owning a really smart dog: They can't wait to teach it to do tricks. That's what I thought of this beer as I looked at it. It's a beer that does tricks.

Thing is, it does its trick very well. You can smell the peppers right on the nose - in fact, the smell of jalapeno skins brought an instant image of green chili to my mind. I thought, at least they got the smell right. Literally mouth-watering, at least for me.

It pours straw-yellow with a finger of head that doesn't stick around for long. The body is mostly clear - maybe a little haze in there, but overall it looks like a pils. So far so good.

The taste...its just right. A touch of the vegetable flavor you would expect, a good bit of heat - it's all there. I'll stop short of saying it made pilsners interesting, but if I see it I'll pick it up again. You should too.

part of the pepper mixed pack, neat of these guys to be doing the pint cans now, and to use four different peppers in this pils base, seems wild how different the three of them ive had have all been, like the chemistry of each pepper changes the beer a lot, or perhaps there are some inconsistency issues here, but either way, its been enjoyable to drink through a number of them. this one is weird because the flavor is among the best of them, the jalapeno is raw and ripe and green and fresh and easy to identify both in nose and flavor, not just as chili pepper but as jalapeno specifically, its lightly warm but way more flavorful than fire, and its wonderful with the light crackery grain base this has and the lager yeast, fully compatible, and i almost get a jalapeno corn bread vibe. the issue though is the base beer is thin and flat, not quite as dead as the gochugaru pepper edition, which was the worst of the three i tried in this regard, but like there isnt much carbonation at all, which really hurts this for me, i need the style to sing, and this one drags. the little prickle of carbonation that is here makes the peppers pop, i just want more of it. i like the off dry nature of the base beer too, its still a pils, but it balances some of the pepper character with the appreciable grain, smart. its a neat series of beer to showcase the peppers off like this, i think this one hits for me in terms of flavor and heat the best of the three i had, but more bubbles would really make this great. a fun experiment!

A: straw to light gold with virtually no head
S: pale malt and spicy peppers
T: a nice clean smooth pils with a clean pepper bite. Amazingly very little "green" flavor. Very well done.
M: medium bodied with light carbonation
O: I'm impressed with the taste. Nice bite but no "green" vegital flavor.