Clean Bite
Situation Brewing

 

1L howler, from Sherbrooke Liquor store. I was gonna call the brewery about the stupid pricing model (twice that of a similar brew brought in from a micro in Calgary - just sayin'), but I somehow lost interest in the matter.

This beer pours a hazy, medium golden yellow colour, with a near-teeming tower of puffy, very loosely foamy, and mostly just bubbly ecru head, which leaves some stellar broken webbed lace around the glass as it very lazily recedes.

It smells of bready and biscuity caramel malt, muddled domestic citrus peel, a weird sense of cat pee unremoved, some generic earthy yeastiness, a plain flinty stoniness, and some generic leafy, weedy, and piney green hop bitterness. The taste is gritty and grainy pale malt, a hovering outsider caramel sweetness, some none too subtle minerality, still muddled domestic and perhaps a lesser tropical fruit addenda, faint mixed peppercorn spiciness, and more tame leafy, weedy, and piney verdant hoppiness.

The carbonation is actually quite tame, despite its upper lip-covering frothiness, the body a decent middleweight, and generally smooth, with a nice airy creaminess kicking off once things get a bit out of yer typical bar fridge temperatures. It finishes off-dry, the gently fading malt essence doing well to keep a sense of balance here, as the varied west coast hops, and attendant wowee sauce contingent seem to have other notions.

Overall, I am more or less satisfied with this iteration of the most recent local version of my long-time favourite style. I'm not going to say that this equals Sherbrooke's (made by Alley Kat) Bad Hare Day, er, back in the day, but it does come close - I'd have this again.