Premium Lager
Hell or High Water Beer and Spirits Inc.

 

Fruity undertones, a very refreshing, easy drinking Lager

355ml can, part of the 12-packs they are sold in around here, so far in rather limited quantities. A somewhat charitable effort, I am to presume, given their marketing (2 years after the fact), and their lack of response to my inquiries as to the brewing origins of this offering.

This beer pours a crystal clear, bright pale golden yellow colour, with three chubby fingers of puffy, densely foamy, and mildly creamy dirty white head, which leaves some sparse and streaky lace around the glass as it quickly evaporates.

It smells of sharp, grainy pale malt, phenolic yeast, red apple skins, a touch of gasohol, and plain leafy, weedy hops. The taste is bready, grainy pale malt, a lessened yeastiness, subtle drupe fruity notes, ethereal petrol astringencies, and more understated weedy, grassy, and leafy hops.

The bubbles are fairly active in their palate-tingling fizziness, the body an adequate middleweight for the style, and perhaps a tad pithy in its sense of smoothness. It finishes off-dry, the lingering pale malt, tame adjacent fruitiness, and prickly hops rolling out as such.

I was expecting so much less, given the latent obfuscation of brands like these - Calgary office, and Saskatchewan supplier, according to Connect Logistics. Anyways, an atypically apt version of this sort of thing, the 'premium' concept not quite as laugh-worthy as usual.