Märzen
Russell Brewing Company

It's a good beer. Something to drink on a colder day.

 

 

 

 

From a bomber...

Look: One finger of jubilant, thick froth pixelating into ragged suds. The colours are reddened tree bark and abandoned rusty saws.

Smell: Spicy floral notes announce the opening, followed by subdued orange and pineapple. Syrup shuffles on the edge of the parade watching the fanfare from afar. Bready hands quietly applaud while even vaguer acerbic tensions flit at the horizon.

Taste: Earthy molasses and spiced marmalade spread across a piece of day old brown bread. There is also a languid clash of halberds releasing some sharp mineral flintiness. Not unnoticed is also the sticky sweat scent from such labours.

Feel: Not pudding fully formed but rather pudding nearing its congealed state when it is both thick and malleable.

Overall: After a few quaffs, a nascent stout dream sends its tangled tendrils into this deep lager. It is a beer of mutability expanding through dark malts after having begun tucked away in spiced floral fields.

 

I am a Russell beer fan, period. I expect quality when I pick up their products and this Marzen does not disappoint. It is a wonderful copper colour, with a small but persistent tawny head. The strength of this beer is the rich malt flavour, with subtle noble hops rounding out the whole package. Well suited to hoisting repeatedly, lederhosen or not!

 

 

 

650ml bottle, one of the few Russell products that seems to have taken its sweet-ass time making it over here to Alberta. So, um, 'Prost'?

This beer pours a clear, bright medium orange-brick amber colour, with two fingers of puffy, loosely foamy, and mildly bubbly beige head, which leaves some streaky rainforest canopy lace around the glass as it slowly and surely abates.

It smells of bready, somewhat toasted caramel malt, a bit of biscuity toffee, and prominent earthy, leafy and grassy noble hops. The taste is gritty, grainy caramel malt, a touch of wet ash, a reduced biscuity bread thing, understated yeast, a soft oily nuttiness, some muted citrusy fruitiness, and more heady leafy, herbal, and grassy hop bitterness.

The bubbles are nice and fluffy in their solid and unassuming frothiness, the body a decent middleweight, and mostly smooth, with a nascent airy creaminess arising as things warm up a tad. It finishes off-dry, the roasty caramel malt and noble hops still playing off of each other like ol' college buddies.

A well-wrought, and true to form version of the venerable style, with the underlying uptick in alcohol heat just biding its time, not willing to play its hand in the flavour, per se, but in the genial feeling one is sure to have upon killing this hefty serving before the night is through.