Wild Amber
Coulee Brew Co.

Tasting notes: As was the case for this brewery's pilsner, this is grainy and rough around the edges. There's a pleasing brown bread and toffee note but it lurks behind bitter grain husk and weedy hops. Overly tannic, perhaps. A hint of raisin and old dried plum. Does not warm up particularly well. An unpleasant booziness. Not sure what's up with these Wild Craft brews. I am not a brewer but from the tasting perspective, this stuff does not compete with existing craft here on the prairies. Maybe they'll fine-tune.

 

 

355ml can. Lethbridge's first brewery since the days of Molson and Sick's is now producing recipes while their facility is being built. In the meantime, the beer is being brewed and canned at the same facility in Kelowna, BC that cranks out the Big Surf, Prohibition, and Bone Beer labels. Yay.

This beer pours a clear, bright orange-brick amber hue, with a fistful of puffy, densely foamy, and somewhat creamy off-white head, which leaves some sticky and sudsy low-hanging cloudy lace around the glass as it slowly bleeds off.

It smells of gritty, grainy pale malt, soured caramel, pithy wet grass, a touch of dank cardboard, and a sort of apple and underripe citrus bowl fruitiness. The taste is bready, grainy caramel malt, more uncertain sour dark fruit melancholy, some unpleasant musty yeast notes, and leafy, grassy, and dried-hay hops.

The carbonation is fairly involved in its enveloping, if gentle frothiness, the body a so-so medium weight, and kind of clammy, which cuts deeply into its attempt at smoothness. It finishes off-dry, the poor caramel malt beset on all sides by things musty, dead organic, and phenolic.

Yeah, I know that this is a stop-gap measure for a nascent brewery to get some brand name recognition out there, not to mention a few early dollars in the door, but that means squat when the product behind it is so much less than mediocre. Perhaps seeking out a partner in one of your finer fellow Albertan craft breweries would establish your street cred a whole lot more. At any rate, I shall be revisiting this one when the new digs are up and running.