Glampfire Victuals
Hubbard's Cave Brewery

 

Tasted in a pint glass from draft at Hubbard's Cave on May 7, 2021.

Poured into a Samuel Adams Perfect Pint. 02.09.21 near barcode on label.

A: Light amber with frothy 1-2 finger head with good retention and copious sticky lacing.

S: Aroma is old-school APA with medium caramel malt, plenty of Pale malt and good biscuity malt presence. Hops are berry and grapefruit. No esters. Malt-forward aroma.

T: Flavor is delicious maltiness with a biscuit and light-medium caramel malt character melding beautifully with the berry, floral, grapefruit, and light erbal dankness of the hopping. Clean with no esters and medium bitterness.

M: Smooth with light-medium body and slick, slightly oily easy to drink feel.

O: An excellent APA for the 21st century - a slightly malt-forward APA with a complex malt and hops palate and a stellar mix of new world hops with old world (2015) caramel and biscuit- led maltiness.

Pours clear, gold in color with one quarter inch head. Taste is pale malt and citrus. Light bodied, bitter, moderate carbonation. Makes for an average pale ale. Not bad but nothing to revisit.

Picked this up at Gary's in Wayne a few weeks back, having never had anything from Hubbard's Cave, having never heard of them before, and having thought that this was an offering from Une Annee and not Hubbard's Cave. Just as odd was attempting to figure this out Looked and felt like a West Coast Pale Ale in some aspects but the hops were somewhat dry, foreign, and dare I say that it was almost a British take on the style or even an ESB? Regardless, this was fun and kept me guessing throughout as it wasn't like anything that I had in quite some time.

This had a nice pour to it as the liquid was a deep golden amber with a fine haze to it, with a moderately fluffy head topping it off. Not a lot of lacing was left behind with a soapy ring about a third of the way down the side of my pint glass with some soapy splotches scattered below that. Lots of floral and dry, bitter hops in the nose with some herbal notes underneath that. Grapefruit, hop oils, overripe and dank tropical fruit, and heavy citrus pith came through in the taste with some herbal tea in the background. Sharp and rounded, a bit of basic malt gave this body while the carbonation was present, but recessed. A nice tingle was left on my palate once this went down, which was surprisingly effortless once this fully warmed up.

Not a lot of booze here but I did feel nice and warm after finishing this off. No date was printed on the bottom of the can but given when this was added on here, this was probably as fresh as I could find it in these parts. While not your typical American Pale Ale, this was certainly well-crafted and not run-of-the-mill in the least - even down to minimalist label. Glad to give this a go and take a break from the haze and hop bombs that I'm more accustomed to!

Aroma is citrus, fruit and floral. The flavor is citrus, caramel malts, fruit l, slightly slick and a nutty/medium sweet/creeping hoppy/mostly smooth finish.

 

Here's a weird one... Glampfire Victuals is a "golden pale ale" featuring Mosaic, Simcoe, and Ekuanot hops by Hubbard's Cave. This was canned on 7/8/20, meaning it's about a month-and-a-half old. I had no real idea how to add this to BA, so I'm trusting my instincts that it will be a bit more like an APA than any other style out there. Let's see how it comes across...

The pour is a translucent medium-amber color with a golden-orange sheen to it when held directly up to light. Certainly seems a bit darker than your average pale ale... don't tell me this is actually an English IPA or something. Then again, HC did just put out Clean IPA recently, which was much more in the EIPA tradition than anything else I've had from an American brewer recently, so who freaking knows. The head here is tight but rather small, measuring a half-finger at its highest point, though it does leave behind some nice, sticky lace and decent legs.

The first impression I get from the nose is biscuity malts, some grassy hops, apricot, melon, and a bit of dark red berry, likely from the Mosaic hops. Now, I'm gonna be honest and say right off the bat that I dislike Ekuanot/Equinox hops, and this does have some of the odd green "vegetal"/peppery(?) character from those that I tend to be not a big fan of. That said, the rest of this seems decent, though I'm not really sure it's an American pale ale. I think it will turn out to be more of an English-style recipe when all is said and done.

The flavor is malty and dense up front. Some graham-like flavor combined with light toffee, herbal hops, papaya, orange peel, and grapefruit. Perhaps a little bit of cleaning solution crossed with vegetal green pepper as well. It's... not awesome, but it's also really unusual and leads me to wonder who the hell this was really made for. It's such an odd beer. The feel is slick and wet, oily, viscous, and, again, really unusual. Even in the finish where the hops take hold again and make way for some nice pine resin and woody undertones courtesy of Simcoe (probably), it's never quite dry or approachable. This is a very odd beer... I would love to know what inspired the brew session for it, as it seems to sit oddly even among other HC stuff I've had. They tend to put their hoppy beers in the "Fresh" series (and derivatives thereof), but this one seems to be another direction entirely. It's not really a direction I absolutely love, but it's fun to think about, and that matters.