Soulless Cedar
Townsite Brewing

650ml bottle - a collaboration with Calgary's Tool Shed, and Australia's 4 Pines, ostensibly based on the fact that the brewer from each outfit is red-headed - hence, a red Belgian ale, made with lemon myrtle, pepper berry, and Spanish cedar.

This beer pours a glassy, medium orange-brick amber colour, with two fingers of puffy, rocky, and sort of chunky off-white head, which leaves a bit of cannonball splash aftermath lace around the glass as it evenly bleeds away.

It smells of grainy pale and caramel malt, spicy red berries (the pepper variety aren't new to me), earthy lemon, Belgian yeast, a weak herbal woodsiness, and some uncertain perfumed floral acridity. The taste is bready and doughy caramel malt, wet cedar chips, lemongrass, a muddled dark earthy fruitiness, subtle Low Countries yeast, a mild pine/spruce edginess, and more gently perfumed floral and grassy notes.

The bubbles are fairly active in their easy-going, if still probing frothiness, the body a decent middleweight, and generally smooth, with a nice coddling creaminess slowly arising as things warm up a tad. It finishes off-dry, the mixed fruit and sturdy caramel malt having little problem with the lingering woody and yeasty esters.

Overall, Soulless Cedar is an interesting enough brew to invite further introspection - the Belgian quotient is obviously attributable to Cedric of Townsite, and the lemon myrtle and pepper berry are of Aussie origin, so that leaves the Spanish cedar to Tool Shed, which I don't understand - is that what their original shed was made out of, or something?