NW Honey Red Ale
Public Coast Brewing Co.

This was a gift from my son. It is a really great Red with a mild mix of molasses’s, cedar wood , apple, grape and brown sugar. The flavors are smooth and similar to a Brown Ale in taste. This a great tasting dark brown treat you should try if at the northern Oregon coast area.-

 

16oz can from brewery. Brown pour, clear, fizzy off-white head. Sweet aroma, honey front and center. Taste is light toffee malts, but the sweet honey dominates. If you like honey, you'll love this.

16oz canned on 10/02/20. Served in a pint glass. Beer is on the brown side of a red ale, almost cola like. Almost could have been a brown ale, which might have been very nice. But it forms a nice tall pillowy chestnut head. Subtle floral sweet aroma. Flavor has a sweet hit right away, with a flavor that could very well be clover honey. It's so strange coming from years of drinking beers where sweet flavors like this would always be fruit-oriented or the result of sugar adjuncts. There are some specialty malt flavors, but American red ales seem to be pretty out of style, and it would take me some effort to pick them out -- it just doesn't catch my interest. But as a honey ale, this showcases NW local honey nicely.

16oz can

A clearly low fill, pours less than 16 ounces into my Willi glass, producing about a finger of brownish tan head that fades within a minute or two. Initial lacing has potential. Body is a very dark red, nearly brown. Looks decent so far, head could have been better.

Nose is odd, but good. Definitely doesn’t smell like honey in the traditional sense, but I can see how it might be affecting things here - it has a richer tone to it, though it doesn’t smell too sweet. Malts have pretty significant toffee, with some caramel. A little floral from perhaps the honey, hops have a little northwest character lingering in the back, maybe the faintest pine. Pretty nice, definitely leans towards the malty side, but it still smells clean and refreshing.

Flavor is similar, but a little more subdued. Some toffee, very faint notes of stone fruit. Not bad, but a little light on flavor.

Carbonation is about medium. Body is medium-light. It’s significantly drier than I was expecting, though some sugars are present. Bitterness is very light, though you get bigger moments of dryness that bring out what bitterness is here. Not bad, wouldn’t actually mind a touch more sugar; and if not sugar, go the other direction and dive in harder with the northwest bitterness. Kinda seems like it doesn’t have an identity as far as that goes, it’s not sweet enough to be a really malty red, and not bitter enough to be a hoppy northwest red. Sounds like I’m describing the perfectly balanced beer, but not in this case. Still, not bad.

Drinkability is fine, this is tasty enough.

Appearance turned out decent. Some foam hung around towards the bottom of the glass, slightly making up for the lackluster head. Lacing was non existent at first, but some slumps of foam started to build and hold towards the bottom.

Overall not a bad beer. Not sure how much the honey played a role, the nose was heavy on the toffee, and the flavor was pretty sessionable.