Big R
North Sound Brewing Company

 

 

Color is dark golden amber with a modest amount of foam in the Kasteel chalice. Quite prickly with carbonation on the tongue, however. Aroma like fresh hay and wet pine needles. An audacious amount of hops take over the flavor. It could be a boiled-down version of Celebrator.

Lots of sharp sensation, almost stinging with hop acids. A little sweetness and body betrays the self-effacing malt. Sharply fruity as it dries out even more as you sip. Some touches of honey with a little mango, but all stony and bitter. This leaves a long hot fruity darkness for the aftertaste, quivering with bitter notes.

A must for the hop enthusiast. Clean and massive hop flavors. From the jug purchased at the brewery west of Mount Vernon. [From notes of 09-17-2013 tasting]

This called an "Imperial Red" by the brewery, but the style isn't available on BA so I dropped it here. Served in straight pint glass. Poured a very pleasing red/amber with a tall, sticky and thick light khaki head that decent retention and crazy thick lacing.

The aroma was a fairly balanced blend of malt and hops with the most noticeable feature being sharp hop tone. On the tongue the malts were more upfront, with a crisp hop tangon the finish.

Body was typical a bigger Red and drinkability was fairly good. Overall, a decent beer that's worth your time if you see it.

Edit 2/5/11: I'm trying the nitro version of this brew and thought I'd add a couple of notes. There seems to be a bit of a roasty aspect to the beer now, maybe they've tweaked the recipe? The nitro smoothness really lets this beer go down almost too smoothly. Overall, I'm liking this a bit better than the several I've had on the regular tap. Again, I don't know if they've altered the recipe or if the nitro is making that much of difference, but this beer is really enjoyable this way.