Vixen
Around the Bend Beer Co.

Poured from a can into a pint glass. Pours orange yellow with a small white head. Smells of sweet grain, nice and inviting. Tastes of sweet grain with pistachio finish. Beer is light bodied and easy drinking, good carbonation. Overall, a very good beer.

 

Look is Amber, with reddish tinge. Aroma if chocolate covered cherry and amaretto. Nutty taste,with hints of cherry and vanilla.

Mouth is smooth, slightly oily, with a nice, dry finish. This is exactly what a seasonal should be. It’s unique, well crafted and fits the season. I would not want to drink this beer year round, but am enjoying it now and would look for it if it’s around for the holidays next year.

Taste: Cinnamon spice, slight nutty notes of pistachio, some sweet, fruit, airy mouthfeel. Same with the nose. Golden honey color hue, mostly clear, with a refined white head and some ringed lace. Medium to med/light body. Holiday cream ale that would pair well with dessert. 11 IBUs

Whatever was added to the Vera recipe by adding cinnamon completely sweetened and improved it's overall flavor. It's a damn shame this is a holiday ale, I'd love to drink this year round. If only more people knew about it! So, here's my review. Hopefully some more of you cream ale aficionados hop in here and put me in my place.

So here goes. Poured lightly into a Spigelau Wheat Ale glass to attempt to emulate the re-circulation found in the nitro stout glass on a carbonated ale. The color is a darker, more redder take on the Vera but not too much so that it's a departure. Smells pleasantly of cinnamon without overwhelming the senses like traditional holiday ales. It's tastefully done. The taste is bang on, malty and sweeter than the Vera cream ale. The mouthfeel is a creamy early on but slowly fizzles out toward the bottom of the glass, and has a heft to it while retaining the same lovely lightness in the gut, leaving you to inevitably want "one more." The only improvement this beer would ever need is a pseudo traditional nitro variant, which might need tweaks to the recipe in order to retain the smell but it would give it a perfect mouthfeel.

Overall this is one of my favorite cream ales and I'm going to stock up on it before it goes out of stock. I mentioned in my previous Vera review that I've traveled all over the UK and found nothing like this cream ale and I'll double down here this is like an improvement on something already fantastic and I'll be experimenting with pistachio in my own brewing to see what I can come up with.