Urban Wit
Situation Brewing

 

1L howler from the brewpub off Whyte Avenue in Edmonton, they of the 'we don't want to be a sports bar pose' when they turned down my request to activate the sound on the Euro 2016 final happening at the time. Ok, non-sportsfans, I'll go and take my other business (food, cheering, etc) elsewhere.

This beer pours a murky, medium apricot amber colour, with two hipster skinny jeans fingers of puffy, rocky, and somewhat bubbly dirty white head, which leaves some prominent looming mountain profile lace around the glass as it quickly dissolves.

It smells of gritty and grainy wheaten malt, stale banana peels, mixed domestic citrus (so, lemon and generic orange), an equally muddled table-top spiciness - weak white pepper and coriander - and some wayward son earthy yeastiness. The taste is bready and doughy pale and wheaty malt, banana pudding, still idle yeast, ethereal white pepper, sugary coriander, and weak (but commendable all the same) leafy, grassy, and dried hay-like hops.

The carbonation is quite affable in its swirling and probing frothiness, the body a decent middleweight, and generally smooth, with a nascent creaminess that perks up shortly after the get-go here. It finishes well off-dry, the cream of wheat malt, along with the mixed fruity notes, doing well to keep me fully engaged.

Overall, this is a very well-rendered version of the style, if a tad simplistic, but that's hardly here nor there, in the end. Easy to put back, and a pleasant reminder of genial quaffers that don't always demand your immediate attention. Worthy of checking out, I gotta say, even though I still question what makes this particularly 'urban', as such.