Nordri
Banded Brewing Co.

 

Transparent blood red in body with white bubbly head. Aroma of herbs, apple skin, medicine cabinet, salt, dark fruits. Tastes of apple, blackberry, raisin, prune, herbs, spice, tea leaves, honey cereal, mild bitterness. Medium body with medium carbonation.

 

 

Slightly hazy deep amber color with a decent sized frothy white head that slowly recedes leaving a foamy wake, Spicy herbal bitters dominate the nose letting little else out o express themselves. There’s a bit of bready malty flavor but again its overpowered by the herbal spicy onslaught. Different, interesting, but not something I’m likely to ever grab again.

This is not a normal beer by any stretch of the imagination, and the denotation on the can, "lager with bitters," is very much an obvious showing of that. The text on the can seems to allude to Banded Horn taking influence from alcoholic beverages outside of the typical realm of beer, and this obviously has some references to gin and various other botanical spirit/liqueur styles. As a quick aside, I don't really know how to rate this as it's definitely not a "kristalweizen" as it's listed on this site, being a lager and all, and since it's a lager, it can't be put in the "American Strong Ale" category either... it's basically a very clean cocktail-in-a-can that somehow manages to be very much a "beer" and not a cocktail, as it were. Like I said, weird for sure. It even comes in a bizarre format (4x16 oz cans of strong lager made with botanical infusion is by far one of the weirdest things I've seen lately, that's for sure... got a single to test the waters), so this is likely going to be out-of-the-ordinary in more ways than one.

Appearance is a deep, hazy copper-orange color with some obvious carbonation rising as it pours. Head is pretty retentive, surprisingly, with a half-finger of off-white foam lasting for the entirety of my first glass (8 oz out of 16, into stemware). Surprising depth of color here, though it doesn't really distinguish itself in this sense.

The nose is where things start getting weird, which makes sense as co-conspirators Owl & Whale are "a team of dedicated bartenders creating unique bitters, syrups and shrubs." I'm getting notes of woody spruce, juniper and other coniferous plants/trees alongside some mild sulfur, strangely-fitting briney salinity/minerality and herbal notes. Well then, this seems to be heavily biased towards whatever the base beer is not. Pretty sure they just made a strong American-style lager base and added stuff to it alongside some caramel malt to darken it and balance the adjunct "bitters" flavors. Never had a beer like this in my half-decade of drinking, and that's cool on its own.

Flavor is very much like a gin-based cocktail with beer... huh. I haven't had a beer-cocktail in a long time (hell, I tend to avoid cocktails in general unless I'm somewhere known for doing something strange or spectacular; call me pretentious but I'm pretty much just a beer or straight whiskey guy), but this has notes of juniper, menthol, pine resin and spruce with the residual sweetness of a nice, high-gravity lager. Very clean with no particular yeast flavors. As I assumed above, this was likely done as a lager to avoid the estery byproducts ale fermentation tends to associate itself with.

Feel is a rather thick chewiness with ample carbonation that lasts throughout the entirety of the can. Hefty with a nice presence on the palate that lasts a long time due to the bitters added. It's not traditionally "hoppy" but there's a bite to the bitters mix concocted for this one, and that aspect shows through quite consistently. I dig this, though it's obviously not for everyone. I'm not even really sure who, specifically, this is for. I am, however, glad it exists.