Backwoods Blonde
THAT Brewery

 

 

Picked up a growler at their Cottonwood location.

This is a tasty enough, very drinkable beer that's also questionably designated "blonde". The color is very nice: a sort of browned-butter burnish characterizes the appearance in the glass, with a minimal crowning of head when poured from out of my Haymarket sixty-four-ounce. But it's not especially light, nor flaxen, nor otherwise what I would expect from a blonde. Maybe that's where the "backwoods" qualification comes into play? Indeed, it's somewhat heavy, ruddy, and quite malty—a fact announced by the crisp, milled-grain aromas that float from the glass. The flavor is just as malty, but less crisp, and not especially clean: it sits in the mouth a bit, though not entirely unpleasantly. Hopping is minimal, as one might expect, but a bit more bitterness—not to mention florality or dry-fruitiness—would serve it well, given its (stylistically questionable) robustness.

Really, it's not a bad beer, but it's not quite right, either, given its genus; nor is it especially noteworthy, irrespective of generic concerns: just a smooth, light-malt dump onto the palate. It's almost—to employ another sense of the word—a generic beer: not almost sickly-sweetened, and perversely grain-fruity, like a macro-pils, but rather an inoffensive pale-malted ale (and certainly *not* a "pale ale"). It *almost* makes me question whether I received the wrong fill, but I've had both their pale ale and their amber, which are really the only offering this could have been, and it's certainly different, lighter, somewhat confounding concoction.