The Belligerent Black Sheep
Olds College Teaching Brewery

650ml bottle - part of an apparently new 'Student Craft Beer Series', where a brewer in training (in this case, Warren Ross) gets to design, produce, and release their own beer. Neat.

This beer pours a murky, dark orange-brick brown colour, with three fingers of puffy, rocky, and mildly bubbly dirty white head, which leaves some striated soapscum lace around the glass as it quickly blows off.

It smells of gritty and grainy cereal malt, muddled domestic citrus rind, a bit of honeydew melon fruitiness, faint meaty char, stale cafe-au-lait, and some plain earthy, weedy, and piney green hop bitters. The taste is crackery and bready caramel malt, still kind of mixed-up citrus esters, equally hard to differentiate exotic fruity notes, some spicy rye graininess, ethereal cocoa powder, wispy smoke, and more understated herbal, leafy, and piney verdant hoppiness.

The carbonation is adequate in its palate-assuring frothiness, the body a solid medium weight, and generally smooth, with just a hint of ashiness getting in the way of a perfect date here. It finishes trending dry, the roasted malt and hops seeing to that little eventuality.

Overall - this comes across as an earnest example of the hybrid style, but hardly one that is as hoppy as it claims to be on the label. Hey, at least they used the word 'complemented' correctly!