Cranberry Blonde Ale
Tool Shed Brewing

 

1L howler from the Liquor Depot most nearest (and actually kind of dearest) to my house and well, heart. Sorry, once again, girl dear, that you have to fucking work by yourself, even on a Sunday. Oops, radioing in!

This beer pours a clear, bright medium bronzed amber colour, with one finger of puffy, weakly foamy, and mostly just bubbly dirty white head, which leaves a bit of strung-out coral reef lace around the glass as things quickly blow off here.

It smells of semi-sweet, bready and doughy caramel malt, some free-range brown sugar, understated and muddled dark fruity notes, a touch of earthy yeastiness, and some plain earthy, weedy, and floral green hop bitters. The taste is more bready and sugary caramel malt, a sense of black berry fruitiness unrequited, some rather capricious floating yeasty esters, and very tame earthy, musty, and dead musky floral verdant hoppiness.

The carbonation is damned near inert in its bland as the day is long frothiness, the body a decent middleweight, and generally smooth, nothing in particular really worthy of interfering with the process here. It finishes well off-dry, the basic-bitch malt essentially ruling the lingering day.

Overall - I watched very carefully as this overworked, er, worker poured my 3 howlers, and this one could not have been mistaken for either of the 2 others - this is not really any sort of cranberry-flavoured ale, as I can barely detect that fruit in even the smallest of quantities. Not to mention that the 'blonde' part seems sorely lacking as well - methinks that Tool Shed's decision (?) to option this to the bullshit Liquor Stores International group (or whatever they're fucking called) wasn't such a great idea after all. And that's the best explanation for this banal offering.