Lookout Session Ale
Deep Cove Brewers and Distillers

 

650ml bottle - I guess that if you're going to be hiking high up in the mountains, a lower ABV brew would be a sensible option, eh?

This beer pours a slightly hazy, pale golden yellow colour, with two skinny fingers of puffy, rather loosely foamy, and bubbly eggshell white head, which leaves some eroding limestone cliff lace around the glass as it quickly blows off.

It smells of grainy and biscuity pale malt, white breakfast cereal (you know who you are), muddled tropical fruit, a soft earthy chalkiness, and more subtle floral, grassy, and piney hop bitters. The taste is quite in line - grainy and cereal-heavy pale malt, a wet stoniness, white grapefruit and underripe orange citrus rind, a lesser tropical fruitiness than in the nose, a twinge of wayward yeast, and more leafy, weedy, and pine needle hoppiness.

The bubbles are adequate in their supportive and oft-tingling frothiness, the body medium-light in weight, and generally smooth, with a wee airy creaminess building as things warm up a tad. It finishes trending dry, as the flat biscuity essence of the malt tangos with the lingering citrusy and otherwise exotic fruitiness.

Overall, a well-made, and enjoyable pale ale, one with a mildly dialed-back ABV, which really wouldn't make much of a difference, bomber-imbibing-wise, from the norm. Nicely hopped, and even though the antipodean varietals aren't all that identifiable, they still fulfill the task admirably.