Leap Beer Smoked Bock
Tree Brewing Co.

Lovely billowing off white head on top of deep reddish brown colour. Aroma is smoke forward with some date, toffee and earthy hops in the background. Flavour follows through with charred meat smokiness on top of caramel, date and earthy herbaceous hops and I guess... bog myrtle. Overall this beer reminds me of the classic Bamberg beers. While I drink it I close my eyes and envision myself sitting in an old half timber brewery.

A flavour that's a bit odd, perhaps that's the bog myrtle?

Great smoky aroma, which is forward in the flavour as well. Nice caramel and bread, fairly meaty. Restrained bitterness, a bit earthy. Going to get the BBQ going and finish this with a T bone.

650ml bottle, an oddly-timed arrival at this particular time of year, especially as this seems to have been targeted for an occasion five months prior to now. Ok, then - still cool to see Beau's name attached to a brew available in Alberta, I gotta say.

This beer pours a clear, bright medium red brick colour, with three fat-ass fingers of puffy, rocky, and silken beige head, which leaves some sudsy summer musical festival tent farm lace around the glass as it quickly hies it outta Dodge.

It smells of raw, unabashed smoked pork loin, a touch of band-aid astringency, gritty caramel malt, singed dark orchard fruitiness, some weird earthy spiciness, muddled yeast, and some tame leafy, weedy, and floral green hoppiness. The taste is bready and doughy caramel malt, still heady smoked porcine meaty notes, more fruit tipped into the fire pit essences, some increasingly forward herbal and damp peppery spice character, and a certain sense of alcohol unrequited.

The carbonation is adequate in its supportive and sometime tacky frothiness, the body a so-so middleweight, and weirdly adroit in its attempt at full-on smoothness, not to mention the mind-bending airy creaminess, to boot. It finishes smoky, medicine cabinet-adjacent, and caramel malt complacent.

Overall, this brew does well enough to ape the big and bad Bamberg greats, what with the otherwise insane flavour components mentioned above. Wood, smoke, meat, spice, and yeast, and sure, we have a 'local' version of a heady Old World style that is a bit of a surprise, coming from A: Tree (no explanation required), and B: Beau's, who are new to we out West, but I'm liking what I'm seeing so far!