Zombie Repellant Ale 2
Category 12 Brewing

 

 

Appearance - Pours a rusty copper with two fingers of creamy tan head.

Smell - spicy yeast, dark fruits (raisin, apple, fig), caramel, candied sugar, and earthy and leafy hops.

Taste - Spicy yeast followed into the dark fruits (raisin, apple, fig). The caramel, candied sugar, and earthy and leafy hops round out the brew.

Mouthfeel - Medium bodied with moderate carbonation. Finishes with a pleasant stickiness.

Overall - A great example of the Belgian Dark Ale style from the folks at Category 12. The flavours blend cohesively creating a stand out of a brew.

650ml bottle - lots to parse here, from the Hallowe'en friendly zombie theme, to the seasonal flavour bashing (which I am all for, let it be known). No mention of the hops employed, like they did last year.

This beer pours a clear, medium (blood?) red-brick amber colour, with four severed fingers of puffy, loosely foamy, and bubbly tan head, which leaves some random gruesome crime scene spattered lace around the glass as it lazily lumbers out of sight.

It smells of bready and doughy caramel malt, a bit of biscuity toffee, mixed orchard fruity notes (baked apples, and indistinct citrus peel, for the most part), a mild earthy yeastiness, some faint free-range ashiness, muddled generic spice, and some understated leafy, floral, and wet grassy green hop bitters. The taste is gritty and grainy caramel malt, a lesser toffee square sweetness, blended musty spice, an equally hard to parse domestic fruitiness, subtle Belgian yeast, and more laid-back earthy, herbal, and musky floral undead hoppiness.

The carbonation is fairly subtle in its brainiac frothiness, the body a solid mass middleweight, and generally smooth, with a wee airy creaminess creeping up once a bit of warming sets in. It finishes off-dry, the complex malt and lingering Low Countries yeast holding down the fort.

Overall, this is a pleasant enough Belgian (and zombie, I guess) tinged red ale, the malt really the unbelievable beleaguered star, in the sense that it's just a little too easy for it to coast through any purported or imminent threats to its dominance. Whatevs, the brain dead hordes will indeed likely be repelled by this, instead relying on shitty lager in 'stubbies' making a well-calculated return to the marketing fold.