Backcountry Nut Brown Ale
Tree Brewing Co.

 

 

355ml can poured into tulip 28/11/16

A clear reddish cola, thumbs width of tan foam has decent retention leaving a couple partial rings

s herbal, leafy hops, hints of chocolate and faint coffee, maybe a little prune

t malts a little darker in the mouth, fairly earthy but decent

M medium bodied, softens up from the bubbles, slick with a burnt toast finish

O agreeable but nothing amazing, a couple and I'll be good

I don 't think I'd bother with this one outside of the mixed pack, decent beer but nothing memorable

355ml can, part of the current Season Pass mixed pack currently being peddled by this Okanagan brewing concern.

This beer pours a clear, dark red-brick amber colour, with three fingers of puffy, loosely foamy, and bubbly beige head, which leaves some craggy mountain face lace around the glass as it quickly recedes.

It smells of toasted wheat and pale malt, a bit of free-range ashiness, subtle bittersweet cocoa powder, ethereal cafe-au-lait, a mixed dark orchard fruitiness, wet bar top nuts (not what you are probably thinking), and some plain leafy, earthy, and weedy green hop bitters. The taste is bready and doughy pale malt, some toasted caramel sweetness, pleasant nutty notes, ephemeral ashes, a sense of day-old coffee unrequited, and more tame leafy, herbal, and grassy hoppiness.

The bubbles are fairly laid-back in their quotidian frothiness, the body a decent medium weight, and generally smooth, with a nice airy creaminess arising as things warm up a tad. It finishes off-dry, the mixed caramel, nuttiness, and muddled cocoa character running the after-hours show, as such.

Overall, this is a pleasant enough English-style brown ale, despite what I classified it as here, before having tasted it (always a problem, yeah?). Enjoyable to a point, as the lack of hoppy offset could always be considered a drawback, in my simple and unfocused world.