Pineapple Ale
Postmark Brewing

 

This is one of those beers that filled me with questions that I will never get answered. So I'd have to make my own assumptions.
It smelled sour. Why did it smell sour?
The scent put me off, it was not a good start. But drinking beer is like building Ikea furniture: you can't always avoid doing it angrily, and the result can either satisfy or disappoint you. This beer, unfortunately, was the latter.
I was expecting a fruity experience, and while the sour smell wasn't reassuring, the clear golden colour of the beer made up for it. It reminded me of sunshine and put me into a very positive mood. But this is where the positive stops and turns sour.
While the flavour initially suggested some pilsner qualities that I liked, it was immediately destroyed by an aftertaste of raw pizza dough. I like hefeweizen, and a hint of yeast. But they must have done something wrong here. I imagine a scenario where a factory worker noticed a canister of yeast and a canister of pineapple, both feeding into a bigger canister of beer. The factory worker, a facebook advocate of the "no pineapple on pizza" movement, was outraged by the sight and destroyed the pineapple container instantly before any sufficient flavours would melt with the "pizza dough"-taste of yeast. Proud of his contribution to the cause, he went home and told his three cats what a hero he was.
But here's the problem: No one else saw the factory worker's vandalism, so they boldly slapped the pineapple label on their bottles and delivered it to the liquor stores all around the North American globe, until one day, an unsuspecting but stunningly handsome customer would come across one of these bottles, and be severely disappointed with the lack of pineapple in a pineapple ale.

 

 

650ml bottle - 'Pineapple | Bright | Fragrant'. A description of a brew, or perfume?

This beer pours a clear, bright medium copper amber colour, with three fingers of puffy, loosely foamy, and bubbly ecru head, which leaves some decent bonsai forest profile lace around the glass as it quickly blows off.

It smells of gritty and grainy caramel malt, a further toasted crackery thing, some faint warmed pineapple fruitiness (like when they are insanely put on a pizza), mild estery yeast, and some plain earthy, leafy, and floral green hop bitters. The taste is semi-sweet, bready and doughy caramel malt, a faint generic tropical fruitiness, ephemeral yeast, and more well-understated earthy, weedy, and musty floral verdant hoppiness.

The carbonation is fairly benign in its barely-there frothiness, the body a decent middleweight, and mostly smooth, nothing really getting in the way of a good time here, apparently. It finishes off-dry, the gently toasted malt kind of the only lingering game in town.

Overall - this is a pleasant enough amber ale, though the purported pineapple is damned near nowhere to be found. Not a big deal, except that the label leads with it, not once, but twice. So, don't go in expecting a big juicy pineapple hit; you'll have to look elsewhere for that.