Huruhuru (Nelson & Rakau)
Hell's Basement

 

355ml can - looks like this will be a series of pale ales with different (New Zealand?) hops each time.

This beer pours a slightly hazy, pale golden yellow colour, with three fingers of puffy, loosely foamy, and rather bubbly bone-white head, which leaves some layered, streaky and splotchy lace around the glass as it very slowly recedes.

It smells of grainy and crackery cereal malt, muddled domestic citrus rind, further indistinct tropical fruity notes, and some plain earthy, musty, and floral green hop bitters. The taste is gritty and grainy pale malt, lemon and underripe orange citrus peel, a still hard to parse exotic fruitiness, some damp minerality, and more understated earthy, weedy, and floral verdant hoppiness.

The carbonation is adequate in its structurally sound frothiness, the body a decent middleweight, and generally smooth, with nothing really causing any sort of trouble here. It finishes trending dry, the malt faltering, while the banal hops keep up their lingering pretense.

Overall - well, this one is certainly better than its immediate predecessor, but only in that it doesn't have any obvious brewing flaws. Beyond that, however, it's kind of boring, as the supposed antipodean hops just fail to pop. We'll see if the next iteration steps up its game, to where I would actually want another serving.