Kölsch
Boiling Oar Brewing Company

 

 

1L howler (at 4.9% ABV) from the good ol' Sherbrooke Likka Sto', and at a very easy to swallow (financially, you heathens) price tag.

This beer pours a slightly hazy, pale golden yellow colour, with one finger of mildly puffy, somewhat rocky, and gently bubbly dirty white head, which leaves some generic sea isle profile lace around the glass as it quickly blows off.

It smells of grainy and biscuity pale malt, some decent fresh apple and pear fruitiness, subtle fermenting white wine esters, and further leafy, floral, and grassy green hop bitters. The taste is bready and sort of doughy pale malt, a wet saltine cracker character, now muddled pome skin esters, all alongside a growing green table grape fruitiness, some indistinct citrus notes, a hint of wet flintiness, and more weedy and floral green hoppiness.

The carbonation is fairly active in its thoroughly engaging frothiness, the body a decent medium weight, and mostly smooth, with a wee airy creaminess arising as things take a turn from the frigid temperatures of the, er, fridge. It finishes off-dry, the pleasant light fruitiness combining with the earnest graininess to play us out in due style.

Yeah, this is one of the best examples of a Kölsch that I have ever come across, even more so given its Albertan heritage - pleasantly grainy, nicely fruity, and, well, not much else, really (that's a good thing). So, clean, then, I suppose, one might proffer (I have it on good authority, that it certainly is), and very, very drinkable, especially as a cog in my Saturday night, all bullshit aside, beer and pizza 'respite'.