First Ditch Effort
Outcast Brewing

 

A: Opaque glowing orange juice, right on target but its still a gross looking style of beer.
S: Guava, mango, citrus, a wee bit skunky from transportation, not as large as I expected but all very nice.
T: Soft juicy fruit, citrusy and tropical, medium bitterness
F: Silky, creamy smooth, wonderful.

A sign of great things to come from this new and highly anticipated brewer.

1L howler from Sherbrooke Liquor store, one of the first outlets in the province to receive this nascent Cowtown brewery's offerings - so let me be one of the early adopters in saying, cheers, Patrick!

This beer pours a rather murky, turbid and almost opaque dark apricot amber colour, with one skinny-ass finger of weakly foamy, and mostly just bubbly dirty white head, which leaves some streaky dissipating cloud form lace around the glass as things quickly subside.

It smells of pungent red grapefruit, blood orange, mango, and guava fruit, some gritty and grainy caramel malt, a certain southern Alberta hard water flintiness, and more leafy, weedy, and piney green hop bitters. The taste is crackery and bready caramel malt, plain Pez dispenser candies, mixed domestic citrus rind, a touch of earthy yeastiness, further earthy flinty notes, and more edgy leafy, grassy, and piney verdant hoppiness.

The carbonation is fairly low-key in its insouciant frothiness, the body a solid medium weight, and sort of smooth, as the citrus and green hop esters take a minor chunk out of the surface sheen here. It finishes off-dry, but barely, as the same mouthfeel interlopers continue to tamp down on the lingering malt.

Overall, this is a very well rendered 'first ditch effort', with the focus seemingly square on the 'Vermont' style of pale ales and IPAs - looks like unfiltered fruit juice, and tastes the same, but with the toast and mimosa to go with it. Good stuff, and a sign of more heady things to come, I'm hoping.