Kickstand Honey Kolsch
Fernie Brewing Co.

 

Poured into a Sester stange. Pours a medium golden amber with a half finger white head with great retention and lacing. Aroma of biscuit, grainy malt, a hint of lemon, a little honey, but that may be just the suggestion from the name. Flavor follows, with biscuit, husky, grainy malt, a suggestion of citrus, grassy hops, starts dry, then gets a nice, light, honey inspired sweetness before a dry, husky finish with lingering grassy hops. Medium bodied with nice sharp carbonation. Overall, quite a authentic tasting kolsch; the malt and hops are to style as is the finish. The honey is not typically found in this style, but it is used lightly and I found it to make the dry, grainy malt very pleasant. And then this finishes very much to style. I rather liked this and perhaps slightly more than a German kolsch, in part due to the light touch of honey sweetness. Nice introduction to this small brewery.

 

Look: Sputtering cacophony of pearl catacombs hiding an copper adulterated golden body.

Smell: The universe's crispiest, cleanest stalk of celery chewing a cube of old world bubblegum wrapped in thin apple skins speckled with clove.

Taste: Well-rehearsed grainy malt finish preceded by only a fluttering of honey and aforementioned sweet gums. Second taste concludes with faint licks of ice-cream. Fourth sip has more tartness and steel. Far later there is a diffusion of perfumed aromatics.

Feel: quite creamy and wet considering the sub-genre.

Overall: To this ignorant imbiber it is the offspring of a hard-working grainy pilsner and forthright, uncouth and loud-spoken blonde ale.

This is a tasty, sessionable, agreeable summer brew. I've no insight to add to previous reviews, aside from the fact that this is another solid effort from FBC.

Given the countless Stangen of Kölsch I've enjoyed during my visits to Köln, I feel moderately confident in my ability to rate this beer in the context of the style -- keeping in mind the "honey" addition.

Appearance: bang on. Crystal-clear pale gold with a puffy white head that fades quickly, leaving a bit of lace on the glass. Exactly as it should be.

Aroma: Very mild malt aroma, with a touch of honey. Given the name, that's as it should be. The slightest touch of sulfur might be in there, or is it another complexity of the honey? Either way, very good.

Taste: This is a tough one. It's unlike any Kölsch out there. How much is the honey contributing? It's missing the crispness of a true Kölsch, and is much more fruity than a normal Kölsch. The honey barges in and takes over. That's not to say it's unwelcome, however. It feels a bit heavily hopped for a Kölsch, and yet the hops is necessary to balance the sweetness and fruitiness of the honey.

However, the thing about Kölsch is: they come in tiny glasses ("Stangen") and they are unbelievably quaffable. The Stangen keep arriving, and we keep drinking them. I think this Kickstand Honey Kölsch has a similar quaffability, which I suppose is the most important feature. So, given that, I'll say: high marks!

Mouthfeel: Here's where it misses a bit. It feels a bit soft and fat, without the crisp refreshing finish of a proper Kölsch.

Overall: highly enjoyable, and an interesting twist on Kölsch (one of my favourite beers). If this were served during the Kölner Karneval, well... let's be honest: they'd be horrified. But me? I'd be happy.

 

A pretty typical kolsch with a thin white head and a light golden colour. The honey came through on the nose along with a slight grassiness and malt. The taste was a bit sweeter, from the honey I presume, than some other kolsch's I've tasted. I enjoyed this beer. It was a great started to a tasting I held.

 

 

 

 

Gold, clear, like apple juice.

Smells spicy and sweet. Cinnamon, ginger, honey.

Mild, lightly bitter, sweetness from the honey, but just a touch. Not that far off from a lager. Nothing special, but a nice, fairly light tasting beer good for summer. Too bad summer is almost over.

Crisp and quite nice.

 

 

 

Appearance - Pours a hazy gold with two fingers of foamy white head.

Smell - grains, fruity esters, hint of honey, bready malts.

Taste - Starts with the grains and sweet fruity esters with a splash of the bready malts and a touch of honey.

Mouthfeel - Medium bodied with moderate carbonation. Ends with the sweetness from the fruity esters and finishes dry.

Overall - A kolsch that has elements true to the style but I find the malts to be subdued by the fruity ester sweetness. The honey was an interesting twist but I found that it didn't play a strong enough supporting role in this brew.

 

 

650ml bottle, the latest in Fernie's Seasonal Series. Kind of strange that a brewery in an area with such strong German roots would see fit to omit the umlaut in the word 'Kölsch'.

This beer pours a clear, bright medium golden yellow colour, with two fingers of puffy, loosely foamy, and rocky ecru head, which leaves some stellar gnarly webbed tree branch lace around the glass as things duly recede.

It smells of bready, somewhat biscuity pale malt, earthy, floral field honey, a bit of hard water minerality, and leafy, weedy hops. The taste offers little in the way of new surprises, with a gritty, moderately crackery pale malt, an ethereal taunt of caramel sweetness, more floral, almost vegetal honey, wet stone, and musty, kind of astringently leafy hops.

The carbonation is average in its low-key edginess, the body medium-light in weight, and plainly smooth, a certain clamminess baying at the mansion gates - the honey, perhaps? It finishes on a strong drying trend, the malt turning tail, the honey apparently joining it, while that flinty character shacks up with the vegetal hops to carry on roughly massaging my tastebuds.

An interesting take on the style, and not for the use of the honey as a guest ingredient. The malt just doesn't keep up its end of the bargain, allowing other, usually lesser notes to predominate, as detailed above, leading to the oddly dry overall character. Not bad, but the difficult to describe vegetal bitterness seems to grow as it warms, making it a harder and harder task to recommend this one.