Winter Lager
Steamworks Brewing Company

A- Pours a chill hazed coppery golden color and is showing off plenty of aggressive carbonation columns, quickly rising to the top. The head is eggshell in color, is about a finger in thickness initially and dissipates rather quickly into a thick-ish film over the liquid. Lacing is moderately modest at best....overall an average looking product...nothing to write home to mother about.

S- Caramel sweet malts are dominant, followed up by a tinge of tangerine zest, bread dough or yeast, some biscuit dryness and the finish is mildly of hop cones....dried up hop cones....again, nothing too interesting here......

T- I find the overall flavors fairly sweet and quite malty in a caramel/toffee sort of way....perhaps this has some wildflower honeyed qualities to it. As for what I was expecting, there isn't really much in terms of winter spice, and the finish leaves behind an oily orchard fruit cake kind of flavor....almost like a muted cinnamon apple spice cake flavor and a tad bit of hop freshness.

M/O- Light medium body, and the bubbles provide a nice palate scrubbing experience, which I like for this one surprisingly! The 5.4% alcohol is hidden quite well and this flavorful lager is quite social. Overall I think this is a nice well flavored lager, but could use work to truly be a 'Winter Lager'....still, I recommend it and would get this one again!

473 ml can purchased from the brewery store in Vancouver in May and consumed the next night on 1 June 2019.
Just the right amount of spicing to make this bold, rich, complex and spicy for style yet not so spicy as to mask the caramel and other malt notes or leave an overly spicy aftertaste.
Overall: well done.

473ml can - if there ever was a time to have a 'Winter Lager', it would be during a -30C cold snap. Like, y'know, now.

This beer pours a clear, bright medium copper amber colour, with a teeming tower of puffy, finely foamy, and somewhat creamy ecru head, which leaves some Mercator Projection pattern lace around the glass as it very slowly abates.

It smells of grainy and crackery cereal malt, some bruised pome fruitiness, and very tame earthy, musty, and herbal green hop bitters. The taste is bready and doughy caramel malt, baked red apples, a bit of oily nuttiness, clover honey, a hint of lager yeast, and more understated leafy, herbal, and dead floral hoppiness.

The carbonation is adequate in its palate-soothing frothiness, the body a sturdy middleweight, and rather smooth, with a wee airy creaminess evolving as things warm up a bit around here. It finishes off-dry, the biscuity malt predominating in the lingering sphere.

Overall - this comes across as a simple, well-made amber lager, with no real reason to dub it with the 'winter' moniker that I can see. And the measly extra ABV will do very little to assuage my ruing to engage in activities in the aforementioned weather conditions.