Samara Brown
Lone Pine Brewing Company

Pours opaque, dark brown in color with 1/4 inch head. Taste is big coffee, roasted malt, and maple on the finish. Heavy bodied, sweet, roasty, with moderate carbonation. More of a coffee beer than a maple one. Good, not great but has just enough maple to make this enticing so that I want more. I do prefer Maple Sunday though.

A sturdy pour is needed to reach a finger of creamy tan foam with long retention and sticky blotches of lace. Deep dark chestnut brown with ruby highlights.

Full smell of brewed coffee and fresh roasted beans with rich malty chocolate, roasted malt and caramel. Faint hops with almost hidden alcohol in the background. Baked dark bread and roasted grains with earthy leather sneak in.

As in the smell coffee leads the taste. semi-sweet with average bitterness from roasted malt more than hops.
Porter like due to the coffee, the maple syrup softens the bitterness and adds a dairy-like taste. The finish is long as bitterness rises to above average. Roasted malt and a slight astringency linger a while.

Medium full body with plenty of carbonation. Smooth easy sipper with warming alcohol. Another case for an Imperial Brown Ale category. Big body and taste, I think I know what beer they are trying to copy.

 

Lone Pine has had a few really good beers up their collective sleeve over the past year or so that I've been checking out their stuff, but I believe this is the first darker ale offering I've tried from them. A fairly-strong (7.5%) brown ale with maple syrup and locally-roasted coffee; sounds really interesting, almost like a breakfast beer but not a stout or porter. I'm into it conceptually, anyway.

The pour is a nice mahogany color with low clarity, but there is a little bit of light creeping through the bottom edge of my glass, meaning it might not be filtered, but it's not fully turbid either, which is good. Some clarity works well in a brown ale, in my opinion, and this is just about what I expect from a smaller IPA-focused new brewery making such a beer. Tight head of khaki foam formed by clustered micro-bubbles, building up to about two fingers upon initial pour, leaving a bit of sudsy lacing as it falls to a half-finger. Solid legs. Definitely a pretty great looking brew.

The nose reminds me at first of the best brown ale in America, the yardstick by which I measure all others, Bell's aptly-named Best Brown Ale, but with a defined helping of roasted coffee. The maple and woodiness are pushed a little back honestly, but there's a granola-like oatiness that I really enjoy coming out the more I let it sit and warm. Light toffee and some smooth nuttiness in there. Perhaps a dash of fruity esters from the yeast, or perhaps the maple fermented a little bit? Intriguing.

On the palate, Samara is smooth and definitely constitutes a drinkable brown ale, with moderate flavors of bittersweet chocolate, bready malts, toffee, and roasted coffee beans, with lighter notes in the background that remind me of fig and baking spice. It's kinda boring and ineffectual in a weird way, though. The maple is a little lost here, and I'm feeling like perhaps it fermented out, as the ABV seems higher than the way the beer actually drinks. I could be completely off-the-mark of course, but it doesn't feel that coincidental. Slightly bubbly carbonation and a medium-round mouthfeel that finishes lightly sweet. I'm a bit let down by this one, but it's certainly not a bad beer. Just comes off a little bit more like a milquetoast brown than a flavored one like it might want to have been considered.

Dark, muddy brown. Light looks to break the edge of the glass but fails short. Decent bar-poured head which lasts throughout the tasting. Moderate spots and streaks for lace.

Creamy, mostly milk chocolate smell. There's a modicum of raw malt, Graham Cracker, and cinnamon.

Think carbonated, cold cocoa. Very sweet resulting in a rich body. Good balancing carbonation. The finish is slightly chalky with light berry sweetening the cocoa. There's a touch of alcohol warmth late in the tasting.

16 oz. can.
Canned 11/05/19.
Moderate to vigorous pour yields a one inch light tan head over a mahogany edged brown body with sticky sheet lacing. Nose of coffee, maple, and dark malts. Taste mirrors nose with the dark malt leading to a coffee middle and finishing with maple, more or less. Very well balanced with a nice feel and overall, a solid brown ale with just the right amount of coffee and maple. Will definitely have again and recommend highly. Cheers to Lone Pine and Michael S. for the hookup!

 

 

 

 

 

Pours a muddy, cloudy brown color, completely opaque. Smell is of roasted coffee, caramel malt, and maple syrup. Taste is the same, with more maple prominent in the flavor, although the flavors all kind of meld together, making it hard to pick out the flavors from each other, although it does taste good. Feel is smooth and no booze apparent. Overall, a very nice beer but it could benefit from having the coffee stand out more in the flavor.