Cinco Cincuenta
La Cumbre Brewing Co.

 

 

7-29

 

a rye pale ale in collaboration with ska brewing in durango, these guys are apparently closer together than anyone realizes. the beer is real good, a nice creamy pale with just a drying and slightly spicy rye profile. a little dumbed down on the hops though, which i think is really its only drawback. it has a nice brassy color to it and a real tall and creamy white head. the nose is bitter hops, grassy and vegetal, with a bit of the dry and fresh baked rye malt aroma. like a loaf of fresh bread, this has as much malt to it as it does hops, which is more of a compliment to the grain and a knock on the somewhat conservative hops than anything else. i wish this had a little more hop aromatic, maybe a bigger dry hop would help. the hoppy stuff both of these breweries do is excellent, so i expected a little more to that end. i like the rye malt though, and i like how lively and dry this is, a nice refresher in the south western heat, even if it is a little basic overall. why do all collaborative beers lately seem to be worse than the sum of their parts though? these guys teaming up should make a beer way better than this, even if i still like it...

This is a rye/pale hybrid almost, which is an interesting experiment. The place where I had it listed it as a Belgian pale, but the description makes it sound a lot more like a rye than anything, and that's how it is listed on this site, so we'll go with it. Almost tasted IPAish to me, but a flavorful beer and a nice twist on the basic offerings, likely because it's a collaboration brew with Ska Brewing.