Hef Off
Common Crown Brewing Co.

 

 

355ml can - this one's name sounds like an Australian saying 'half off', doesn't it? Anyways.

This beer pours a hazy, yet bright medium golden yellow colour, with two fingers of puffy, loosely foamy, and bubbly off-white head, which leaves some streaky mountain range profile lace around the glass as it quickly dissipates.

It smells of bready and doughy wheat malt, a lesser crackery graininess, damp banana chips, muddled earthy spice, some gently estery yeastiness, and very tame leafy, weedy, and floral green hop bitters. The taste is gritty and grainy pale malt, some cereal wheatiness, faint banana pudding notes, a subtle clove/coriander spiciness, fading yeast, and more well-understated earthy, musty, and floral hoppiness.

The carbonation is fairly restrained in its innocuous-seeming frothiness, the body a decent middleweight, and mostly smooth, with nothing really a cause for concern at this particular juncture. It finishes well off-dry, the mixed malt and wan banana notes presiding.

Overall - this comes across as a rather straight-forward version of the traditional style, no big hop treatment or the like going on here. Perhaps a tad sweet at times, but it's still pretty easy to drink, and definitely patio-friendly (I don't know why I've flip-flopped on using that as a recommendation metric of late - ah well).