Birthday Bitter
Machine House Brewery

Poured from 500mL bottle into a dimpled mug. This bottle says 4.1% ABV on the label.

Appearance: medium orange hue with a light haze and two thick fingers of frothy ivory foam atop. Head retention is also good; very pretty indeed!

Smell: toasty, bready malt with a hint of biscuit and an earthy, floral hop aroma. Very to-style, and well executed.

Taste: the malt is like the aroma, toasty and bready and biscuity, though perhaps a bit heavy on the biscuit for my taste (though I recognize that this is to-style). There's some sweetness on the end, and the bitterness really pops without being too much. Overall I think it's a good example of the style.

Mouthfeel: medium body with a decent carbonation and creaminess.

Overall: I like this beer quite a lot. It's very autumnal, like a cold-weather beer, but also light and refreshing. I dig it.

Poured into a Samuel Smith pint glass. Pours a lightly hazy, medium golden amber with a three finger white head with great retention and solid lacing. Aroma of lightly grainy pale malt, graham cracker, faint lemon and a touch of diacetyl. Flavor follows with grainy malt, grassy English hops, light graham cracker and brown bread, hints of lemon and apple. Medium bodied with light creaminess. Quite malty and good flavor for the ABV. The malt and hops with classic English bitter character, although the bitterness is stepped up a bit while still providing traditional grassy English herbal notes. Nicely done. A bitter worthy of its name.

Muddy copper/burnished gold body with a big rocky off white head. Sttles down to a manageable half finger.

Nose is initially kind of sweet and grainy. Honestly smells kind of like a brewery.

Nice blunt hoppy bitterness up front with a malty/yeasty back end to it. Finish comes back to the hops, though.

I get more of like an english IPA impression here than a true bitter, but I also don't know what the hell I'm talking about, so YMMV. Overall it's pleasant on another hot summer day, but if I'm being truly truly honest with myself, I think I want to like it more than I actually do.