The Full Nelson
Tiny Rebel Brewing Co.

330 ml bottle, from Ales By Mail. ABV is 4.8%. Hazy golden colour, moderate white head. Hoppy aroma with spicy and fruity notes, hints of white grapes. Fizzy mouthfeel. Fruity and spicy / herbal notes in the flavour too, bitter finish.

 

Pours quite hazy with a small head but still gives solid lacing. Nose is more fruity and less white grape than you'd expect from the hops. Taste is full on fruit with a cracker backbone that makes this both really easy drinking and very flavorful. Overall another very good beer from this brewery.

Bottled
Pours a slightly hazy golden body with big foaming white head
Aroma is of 1lqp mango, peach and pear
That Sauvin goes from the aroma to the flavour creating a fruity white wine

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Prefer USA pale ale style, merely personally feeling

 

330ml bottle poured into a tulip glass

Look: Pours something best described as 'spray tan' orange with a thin, off-white head that dropped back to a surface layer of foam in no short amount of time. Fairly fizzy, but not much in the way of lacing to speak of. Slightly hazy, but then it is bottle conditioned so that's hardly surprising.

Smell: Blimey, this smells fruity - the bottle blurb extolls the virtues of the Nelson Sauvin hop (hence the name, I guess) which allegedly imparts a grape flavour. We'll come to that in a bit. As is, it's a massively 'fruity' flavour with bucketloads of hops, grassy/herbal notes and more than a hint of citrus (lemon and grapefruit primarily). Grapes? Didn't notice that so much. Even so, it smells delightful.

Taste: To sum it up in one word: interesting. Slightly malty, slightly hoppy and slightly fruity with a hint of slightly stewed tea-leaves. That's a lot of 'slightlys' but there feel to be a lot of flavours vying for attention here. None of them really dominates, so you end up with an interesting mashup of malt, fruit, hops and tea leaves.

Feel: Quite sharp and fizzy - the finish is very dry, almost tannic. Decent enough body, and par for the course for a pale ale, American or otherwise.

Overall: Not bad, not bad at all. I've not had a great many of Tiny Rebel's brews so there's no real reference point, but whereas my previous encounter with their smoked stout left me somewhat underwhelmed with its understatedness, this one manages to hit the bullseye without dialling all the flavours up to 11 and beyond, although I think the grape angle has been overstated.

Dry, fruity and very tasty - well worth a look.