Alpenglow
Three Ranges Brewing Company

 

355ml can - I'm pretty certain that Grizzly Paw had a beer with the same name first, so it's nice to see that people (read: lawyers) on both sides of the Rockies are playing nice (or just blissfully unaware, as it were).

This beer pours a clear, bright medium bronzed amber colour, with two fingers of puffy, loosely foamy, and bubbly tan head, which leaves some random coral reef lace around the glass as it quickly sinks out of sight.

It smells of grainy and biscuity caramel malt, further indistinct breakfast cereal notes, some mild bittersweet cocoa powder, an oily bar-top nuttiness, and some plain leafy, weedy, and dead floral green hop bitters. The taste is bready and doughy caramel malt, a touch of biscuity toffee sweetness, still oily nutty essences, ethereal wet smoke, and more tame leafy, earthy, and musty floral verdant hoppiness.

The carbonation is rather sedate in its plain-Jane frothiness, the body a solid middleweight, and generally smooth, with a nice inborn creaminess rising from the depths as this warms up a tad. It finishes off-dry, the caramel, toffee, and generic cereal character calling any lingering shots.

Overall, this is certainly a decent version of the style, as the biscuity caramel malt had me at hello. Nothing too complex or complicated, of course, but worth checking out if you're a fan of the sweeter side of the craft beer scene.

A gift from a friend who brought it to me from Valemount. This Amber ale leaves no head or lacing. It pours a rich carsmel colour and the nose is full of caramel. The taste tends toward the chocolate and nutty notes common in the red or amber ale.