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Big Spruce Brewing

 

Hazy orange-gold with nice head and lacing. Tropical, fruity nose. Medium malt body with firm hop finish and good smoothness. Solid.

 

Appearance - Pours a golden amber with two fingers of frothy white head.

Smell - citrus and tropical hops, lemon, pineapple, passion fruit, orange peel, grapefruit peel, biscuity malts, and earthy yeast.

Taste - citrus and tropical hops upfront followed by the lemon, pineapple, passion fruit, orange peel and grapefruit peel. The biscuity malts and earthy yeast finish the brew off.

Mouthfeel - Medium bodied with moderate carbonation. Finishes sticky with the hops, fruits, and malts lingering.

Overall - An enjoyable and sessionable brew that is balanced between the malts and hops. The brew goes towards a worthy cause which makes it even more of a fact to check it out if you're a fan of the style.

 

Poured from a 473ml can. Big Spruce Brewing has announced the upcoming release of a new beer to support the efforts of the Ocean Tracking Network, an organization that tags and tracks sharks in the ocean surrounding Nova Scotia.
An IPA that features Mosaic and Citra hops.
A pretty good slightly hazy IPA a great nose and a tasty one full of tropical fruit notes.

473ml can - made in conjunction with the Ocean Tracking Network, something which I have never heard of before, but then I don't live in the Maritimes.

This beer pours a clear, medium golden amber colour, with two fingers of puffy, rather loosely foamy, and bubbly off-white head, which leaves some decent thickly webbed lace around the glass as it slowly recedes.

It smells of dank pine resin, gritty and grainy cereal malt, muddled domestic citrus rind, a further tropical fruitiness, and more leafy, weedy, and floral green hop bitters. The taste is grainy and crackery pale malt, faint uric acid notes, orange and red grapefruit rind, some damp minerality, and more understated earthy, musty, and musky floral hoppiness.

The carbonation is average in its palate-satiating frothiness, the body a solid middleweight, and mostly smooth, but for a minor hop astringency maybe not making nice with the local populace, as it were. It finishes trending dry, the hops strongly suggesting a move in that direction.

Overall - this is an agreeable enough version of the style, verily balanced between malt sweetness and hop acridity, and all for a good cause, way out East, at least. Worth checking out, even if you don't care a whit about the 'electric torpedo ray'.

 

 

 

Can: Poured an amber color ale with a large foamy had with good retention and some lacing. Aroma of caramelized malt with some bitter hops with some light caramel malt presence. Taste is a mix of bitter and citrusy hops with some caramel malt and some bitter hops notes. Body is full with good carbonation. Too much caramel notes and too much presence of bitter nots for my taste buds.