Orange Ginger Beer
Penpont Brewery

500ml bottle. This appears to have been made for Liquor Stores GP Inc., which in Alberta is the local private liquor store monopoly.

This beer pours a hazy, muddled medium golden amber, with two finger of weakly foamy, mostly bubbly dirty white head, which leaves nothing in the way of lace around the glass as it quickly dissolves in front of my eyes.

It smells of tart, fleshy orange rind, blended well enough with an earthy ginger root spiciness, a bready, somewhat doughy pale malt, and very little else. The taste is more of that spliced orange zest and zingy ginger sushi side combo, all rather holding it over a cowering, plodding grainy pale malt backbone. Again, if there's hops in this, and I presume that there are, they're thoroughly obfuscated.

The carbonation is fairly active, even a bit fizzy, but that might just be my internal Canada Dry associative disarray at work, the body a heady medium weight, which lends further credence to the idea of a beer under all this, while the smoothness takes a hit from the heat and edginess of the ginger (and maybe the orange, it's kind of hard to tell). It finishes off-dry, the malt finally having a tactile say, along with the inherent fruit and root sugars abounding, while the zing of the guest ingredients continues its wearing down of my soft palate.

It's orange, it's ginger (both of the real-world, came from dirt, ilk), sure, and even with an admittedly stunned base beer, I have to put this head and shoulders above the ginger and fruit alco-pops of the world, especially those masquerading as beer. That's not a problem here - here, the problem is a certain overwrought headiness that comes about from too much of a good thing. Discuss.