Old Pappy's Smooth Sailin' Amber Lager
Phillips Brewing & Malting Co.

 

 

 

 

I'm a beer drinker, not a beer taster.
To me this is what a great western Canadian beer should taste like, it's easy to drink but it's not without body and a fuller flavour. It also has that great Canadian barley flavour, that can often get lost in today's Hop heavy micro brews.
It's similar in many ways to a Kokanee Gold (another westcoast Amber), but is much more refined, as a Phillips beer should be. I really hope Phillips replaces their current Gold Lager this product, as I know have a new favorite.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

341 ml bottle poured into a shaker pint glass, obtained from a Phillips mixed pack and the current rotational offering around these parts. Looks much like a lighter colored Marzen/Oktoberfest, a golden amber hue with around three inches of foamy off-white head. Aroma is cracker-like and rather bready, pale malt-forward with a hint of brown sugar and some grassy, herbal European hop notes. The hop aroma is quite pleasing and becomes more apparent as the beer warms up, hay-like but with a more assertive aromatic fresh herb note as well. This culinary herb scent carries over onto the palate. Although the initial impression is one of soda and graham crackers with a little hard toffee, the hops quickly catch up and I am getting a ton of thyme and white pepper spice, particularly the former. Interesting. The carbonation level is moderate to high and the body is just a hair past thin, with more herb and spice hops in the dry finish along with a little root cellar earthy funk. Hop-centric, grassy, rather dry take on a style that is often overly sweet and insipid when done by larger breweries. Phillips manages to do almost all styles well and this particular brew delivers ample old world character even as the malts remain fixed in the new world brewing space, lacking the complex malty richness of true German red lagers. Nothing to be ashamed of though. I endeavored to enjoy at least one more before the entire Phillips mixed pack became a casualty of a rainy and windy Calgary evening playing board games with the wife and a few buddies. Smooth sailing indeed.

 

341ml bottle, a refugee from the current Phillips Showcase mixed pack.

This beer pours a clear, medium golden amber hue, with three fingers of puffy, frothy, and loosely foamy off-white head, which leaves some tacky snow rime lace all around the glass as it slowly ebbs away.

It smells of biscuity, bready pale malt, peppery yeast, white saltine crackers, and earthy, leafy, and somewhat grassy hops. The taste is semi-sweet bready pale and caramel malt, a bit of crystalline toffee, a hard water flintiness, echoes of white pepper dust, and sassy leafy, grassy, and straw-like hops.

The carbonation is moderate, a nice oscillating, bubbly whisper carrying us through, the body on the light side of medium weight, and mostly smooth, that crackery edge kind of putting an upper limit on things. It finishes fairly dry, the biscuity malt and hops having bled any sweetness out of this particular joint.

Leave it to a micro in Victoria, BC to make a simple amber lager that looks, smells, and tastes like an ESB, and a damned good one, at that (the style has been abused of late around here, is all). Smooth sailing, indeed, they should surely consider making this one a full time production offering.