Picea Pale Ale
High Hops Brewery

 

[Reviewed from notes taken in Fall 2014.]

Spruced pale ale. Served on-draught into a pilsner glass @ High Hops.

HEAD: ~1 finger in height. White in colour. Nice creaminess and thickness. Full consistency. Has an excellent soft complexion.

Retention is good - ~6+ minutes. Leaves no lacing as it recedes.

BODY: Translucent orange-copper of average vibrance. Clean, with no visible yeast/lees.

Appears well-carbonated. Not a unique or special appearance for a pale ale, but generally good looking for the style. I notice no egregious flaws.

AROMA: Very fresh and inviting. Beautifully floral, with impressively subtle spruce, pine, and evergreen aromatics. Vaguely citrusy. There's no hop bite or grapefruit bitterness; the pale malts tame any hop bitterness well. Quite pleasant.

No overt yeasty aromatics or off-notes are detectable, nor is any overt booze.

Clean and fragrant, though not "dank" (as the kids say) or pungent.

An aroma of mild strength.

TASTE: Incredibly well-balanced, with a perfect pale malt backbone lending balancing sweetness and taking the edge off the hop bitterness without restricting the beer's depth of flavour. Complex layered floral hop flavour is present throughout.

The subtle spruce is a highlight, and is backed by complementary albeit subsidiary hints of pine and evergreen. Lightly sappy, and citrusy (from tangerine). Fresh in flavour.

Boasts a nice flavour duration, with a faint hop bitterness lingering into the aftertaste. Flavour intensity is apt - mellow for the most part, but hop-emphatic where it needs to be in the beer's structure.

Impressively subtle and rather intricate for a pale ale. I quite like it. Well-built, with natural cohesion and harmony. Tastes like a gestalt whole of a beer, exceeding the sum of its parts.

TEXTURE: Smooth, wet, lightly oily, crisp, clean, creamy, medium-bodied, aptly thick, and well-carbonated.

This mouthfeel elevates the beer as a whole, highlighting the spruce without coming off overly sticky or syrupy. Refreshing and well executed.

OVERALL: Startlingly fresh hop flavours and masterfully subtly integrated spruce tip notes make this an incredible pale ale and perhaps even a unique one. Effortlessly drinkable and very enjoyable fare. I'd get this by the growler. Wow. Hat tip to High Hops for a job well done.

Low B+ (3.81) / VERY GOOD

 

i love beer with spruce in it, and this is a pretty good one, certainly one of the better colorado made ones i have had. its a stronger and maltier pale, coming in i think close to 7% abv, and with a lot of weight and flavor from the pale two row base malt. it has some sweetness in the nose up front, like honey, with the spruce later on like where the hops are usually, but this seems like spruce instead of hops in the nose, and i miss them a little bit, was expecting both together. the spruce is strong and fresh in the taste. fresh picked, even though its a strange time of year to have this beer fresh, if it is fresh, tough to tell. i like the intensity of the spruce, its christmasy and robust, lingers long on the palate after the swallow. the only real negative for me is the feel, its heavy, sits heavy in the belly, and is a little sweet and under carbonated. i wish for a little more hops to play with the pine, but i like the flavor quite a bit as it is. a filling but tasty pint, especially if you love spruce beers like me.