Down Easy Pale Ale
Hoyne Brewing Co.

 

 

Clear red-tan color. Poured a tall head that took longer than a couple of minutes to collapse to a patchy skiff. Very low flow of tiny bubbles from the bottom of the glass. Left small, irregular patches of lacing.

A vegetal hop scent dominates. There is a little sour yeast funk and a touch of malt. Swirling the glass kicked up a light barnyard that faded away after a few seconds and a slightly musty (almost button mushroom) scent.

Slightly sweet followed by an odd stale cooked cruciferous vegetable flavor. Some nice mildly bitter black tea and neutral hops finishes it off. The aftertaste is more of the bitter black tea and hops.

A firm tongue stinging, despite the visual lack of carbonation. Light but coarse foam. Slightly oily. Slight astringency.

The weird cruciferous vegetable flavor was the only part I didn't like. It was like having leftover broccoli and cabbage smell in a fridge invading the other food. On the other hand, I really liked the black tea and hops flavors.

 

 

 

 

 

650ml bottle - yes, isn't it a great thing for brewers that ale 'also causes great thirst'?

This beer pours a clear, medium copper amber colour, with a near-teeming tower of puffy, finely foamy, and somewhat bubbly beige head, which leaves a few instances of chunky lace around the glass as it very slowly melts away.

It smells of semi-sweet, bready and pastry-like caramel malt, a bit of biscuity toffee, some indistinct citrus fruitiness, and fairly laid-back earthy, leafy, and piney green hop bitters. The taste is sugary caramel malt, toffee squares, breakfast biscuits, generic dark fruity notes, a touch of hard water flintiness, ephemeral earthy spice, and more understated leafy, weedy, and resinous piney verdant hoppiness.

The carbonation is average in its workaday frothiness, the body a solid middleweight, and generally smooth, with the hops keeping their nose out of everybody's business here, thankfully. It finishes off-dry, the robust malt, mixed fruitiness, and waning hops making a day of it.

Overall, this is an enjoyable enough pale ale, if one that tends much more toward the sweet side of things, with not quite an adequate amount of bittering offset. While tasty, I am increasingly fighting the urge to go dig up my usually handy-dandy tongue-scraper, which I seem to have misplaced.

 

 

 

 

Drank not quite cold enough with Quebecker, it was not well received. They have better beers.