Skeptic
Epic Brewing Company

 

 

Hazy, dark golden color. Impressive blanketing lace from a relatively modest head.

Interesting smell of pale malt and a bit of "sink", perhaps from an uncleaned beer line. However, this is my third beer here and paler offerings didn't exhibit this.

Starts like a typical pale ale but the peach comes through in the swallow. Highly carbonated with a moderate body. The aftertaste is less sweet than I would expect from a "peach" beer. There's a bit of tartness to the finish.

 

i should start by saying how much i really enjoyed this beer, i sucked down several of them at crafty fox. it is however weak on the barrel aged aspect, and even weaker as an ipa. that doesnt diminish my overall enjoyment of this though, but its a little misleading. hazy orange brew about the color of canned peaches, which is appropriate considering this smells almost exactly like canned peaches. not the lousy too sweet tin canned ones, but the ones my mom used to make in the fall from fresh peaches. its just like that in the nose. i guess there are some fruity hops on the nose, complimentary, but well behind the peach. the barrel is hardly there on the nose, more oak i suppose than whiskey, and faint again in comparison to the fruit. one of the great successes here is that its not sweet at all, but the peach flavor is fantastic. true peach all the way through, and the hops do kick up a little at the end, but its much more of a pale ale than an ipa in that respect, the bitterness is nowhere close, and the fruit still dominates. mellowed and integrated by oak maybe, but its time in that process was short i have to think, the character of the wood isnt all that much. more new oak than whiskey too. overall though a really flavorful glass of ale, and better than anticipated. i also really like that its lower in abv, this could easily have been 10% abv or something and it would have detracted from the overall experience i think. fun project and better executed than most breweries would have pulled off. summery.

 

 

 

A flat out letdown...I had high hopes for this collaboration, two great breweries in a barrel aged collaboration, but it really is a subpar effort. Reminiscent of some bad funky homebrew.

 

Pours like a standard west coast IPA. Golden straw color with a finger thick of white head. I do not like the smell. Smells more like dried peach skin than fresh peach flesh with bitter, not piney, notes of hop. Little bit of hay smell as well. Wait a minute, do I smell corona's trademark skunk? Tastes first of hops then peach and then leaves a weird aftertaste in my mouth... am I tasting the barrels flavors there? I dunno. There's an unpleasant bitterness left on the back of my tongue as well. Feels fine. Beer is meh at best.

22 oz bottle. Pours clear light straw color with a medium frothy white head that retains well and laces the glass.

The aroma is sweet malts with peach and some spicy hops.

The flavor is wheaty malts with sweet boozy peach and a bitter finish. The mouthfeel is medium to full bodied with smooth carbonation.

Overall, I get some bitterness but not much hop flavor. The peach is a bit boozy and medicinal.