2 Year
Blindman Brewing

 

8 oz on tap at Beer Revolution. Dark brown ale with minimal head when arrived to table. Aroma is of sweet caramel malt, dates, mildly yeasty. Taste is a very smooth caramel toffee with underlying earthiness, bereft from significant hoppiness. Smooth warming finish with mild, but not pronounced, booziness 9.5% would imply. Liked Year 2 more than Year 1.

 

16oz pint at Beer Revolution YEG Oliver Square. Blindman's 2nd anniversary celebration offering.

This beer appears a hazy, dark orange-brick tinted brown colour, with one skinny finger of finely foamy, and somewhat creamy tan head, which leaves some splendid limestone wall lace around the glass as things slowly abate.

It smells of semi-sweet, bready and doughy caramel malt, candi sugar, some bruised dark orchard fruitiness, subtle Belgian yeast, and very tame earthy, herbal, and perfumed floral green hop bitters. The taste is gritty and grainy caramel malt, a further biscuity toffee character, some gentle Low Countries yeastiness, muddled overripe pome fruity notes, and more understated leafy, weedy, and besotted floral verdant hoppiness.

The carbonation is fairly active in its palate-propping frothiness, the body a solid medium-heavy weight, and mostly smooth, nothing in particular getting in the way of a good time here. It finishes off-dry, the generic estery fruit kind of running the lingering table.

Overall, this is a rather bang-on version of a style that I always like to see done well, as it is here. Quite balanced in its various strengths (not just the fully integrated 19-proof alcohol), and actually drinkable, at a duly measured pace. Worth checking out, and a proper quaff now that September has expired into a decidedly cooler October.