Bad Hare Red Ale
Rhinelander Brewing Company

 

 

650ml bottle. Another in an increasing deluge of beer styles that Minhas, erp, I mean Rhinelander, has recently made available around these parts, at all yer less than discerning likka stores.

This beer pours a slightly hazy medium bronzed amber colour, with two fingers of tightly foamy, lazily creamy dirty white head, which leaves some low, lonely arches of sea speck lace around the glass as it lazily sinks away.

It smells of stale orchard fruit, pale corn and battered barley malt, a certain, "gee, where the fuck have I seen this before" plastic astringency, and some equally low-fi offensive weedy, compost-pile hops. The taste is more of the same effluence - stale grainy malt, like the offal of a decent Irish red ale batch - a near-gag-inducing acrid orchard fruitiness, one musty, dusty, and not at all pleasant in its sweetness. Very minor points, I suppose, for no obvious evidence of the uptick in ABV - not that it would be a bad coverup here, really.

The bubbles are active, but mostly in an airily frothy vein, the body an adequate medium weight, I'll grant, but with little in the way of an upside, as the support here just fritters and falls away. It finishes off-dry, with a heavy, almost overbearing emphasis on the former - 'off', in case I was being a tad too droll.

Jebus tap-dancing Christ! You'd think that any brewer worth his salt would see a problem like this, even at a 'brewery' like Minhas/Rhinelander, and maybe stick up his hand, and say, wait a minute, Sri Minhas, but perhaps there is a better way? And his remains of the day are what make this a 'red' ale. Tell me a refuting story otherwise.