Astral Rejection
Collective Arts Brewing

Poured with an exceptional two fingers of head the retained exceptionally well, the body is a half cloudy dirty blonde, no lace to speak of on this one though. Smells smoky, as that is by far the dominant note with maybe a few hints of banana wheat malt, which pretty much doubles as the flavor note. Mild banana and wheat malt, behind a smoke note that builds, takes over and peters out. It goes just past that rauchbier bacon note you might be familiar with and goes right into clearly smoked territory. Mouth is a bit dry, but it's a different kind of dry, like a mild just smoked a cigar kind of dry that no amount of water would clear but you don't really want it to. Carbonation is great and frothy, transitioning is good, but it's not a long journey. Light bodied, which while refreshing I feel does this beer a disservice. The beer aspects can't overcome the smoked note here, and while that note isn't unpleasant, a lot of character is lost to it. I think that really is a core issue with smoked beer, it's easy to underdo and in imparts little, and easy to overdo which was the case here. Still, it was very nice and I'd happily drink it again.