Resolute Bitter
Andwell Brewing Company

500ml bottle, part of a mixed four-pack from Andwell currently available in Alberta. The beer is named after a Canadian 'town', of all things, which upon further investigation into the geography of my own nation, is revealed to be an extremely northern village on the Northwest Passage, which was originally named after the HMS Resolute, an early Arctic explorer vessel, which explains this English brewery's tie-in.

This beer pours a crystal clear, bright medium copper amber hue, with two fingers of foamy, fluffy, bubbly ecru head, which leaves some nice melting iceberg lace (sorry, couldn't help myself) around the glass as it slowly drops away.

It smells of semi-sweet biscuity pale malt, with a certain cake-like pastry character, menthol-esque orchard fruit, and leafy, earthy hops. The taste is more fairly sweet biscuity caramel malt, with a subtle dose of toffee, some middling apple and pear fruitiness, and lightly bitter earthy, leafy noble hops.

The bubbles are quite understated, barely noticeable in their workaday goings-on, the body medium-light in weight, and smooth in a generic, no frills sort of manner. It finishes off-dry, the tamely game malt and somehow stilted hops working things out for our mutual benefit.

A nice, well integrated English bitter ale, the malt and hops sort of devolving into a single entity, that of a straight-ahead pub spectacular, i.e. something you can safely ignore the individuality of in pursuit of an evening's other distractions.