Snowcrest Dark Lager
Beaverhead Brewing Company

 

Served on tap in a pint glass

Appearance – The beer is served a dark brown-reddish color with a large billowy tan colored head. The head has a decent level of retention fading slowly over time to leave tons of foamy lace on the sides of the glass.

Smell – The aroma is biggest of a caramel sweet aroma as along with some more roasted malt and light toast smells. Along with these aromas comes some light dark fruit aromas of cherry and raisin as well as just a little bit of a molasses smell as well.

Taste – The taste begins with a rather nice roasty and sweet taste with lots of roasted malt and some flavors of dark fruits with raisin, plum, and cherry. As the taste moves on, the fruitiness fades ever so slightly with other flavors of a more toasty malt and slightly hopped taste of a earthy and herbal nature takes its place. While the fruit fades a bit, some flavors of molasses and caramel replace the sweetness lost by the fruit. With a light coffee taste also developing later in the taste, one is left with a decently roasty and lightly hopped and moderately sweetened but still somewhat crisper flavor to linger on the tongue.

Mouthfeel – The body of the beer is on thinner side overall with a carbonation level that is on the more moderate side. For the roasty flavors of the brew a slightly thicker body would have likely been a bit more fitting, but otherwise the feel was pretty decent for the crispness and lager style of the brew.

Overall – An alright dark lager overall. It had a decently orasty flavor all while maintaining a good level of crispness and sweetness to make it rather more refreshing for a darker brew.

I added this beer. I had to designate it as a "Euro Dark Lager" because none of the American designations are appropriate at all. Beaverhead Brewery simply calls this beer "dark lager". It reminds me of a black lager, but this site won't let me call it that.

Poured from a growler into an 8 ounce sampler, a moderate pour will produce about 3/4 inch of an attractive, semi-sticky head. The beer is a dark, ruddy, yellowish-brown with fairly low carbonation.

Very clean, subtle aroma hinting at caramel, with some herbal hops, maybe a tad of diacetyl. The flavor includes a good deal of toasty bitterness, suggestive of coffee, unsweetened chocolate, herbs, a touch of charcoal. Quite dry actually. A suggestion of subtle fruitiness may evoke dark cherries or even a tinge of chokecherry.

This is a very nice, subtly flavored beer that should probably be called a black lager. As such, I would classify it as one of the best I've tried of this particular style- the others were a bit too "burnt" for my taste. This one seems just right.