CLS Farm Harvest (2022)
Matchless Brewing

 

Poured into a Seattle Beer Week pint glass. Pours a hazy, medium golden amber with a two finger white head with great retention and nice lacing. Aroma of pale malt, citrus hops, cucumber and lemon; spicy with a little dankness. Flavor is biscuit malt, citrus hops, lemon, melon, mild stone fruit; floral. Medium bodied with light to moderate creaminess and nice mouthfeel. I drink a lot of IPAs, so every year I have to redial my taste buds for fresh hop ales, which are usually more pale ale in style, as is this one. What I wasn’t expecting was a flavorful, quite English malty body underneath the hops. I was pleasantly surprised. I just sampled a series of traditional English bitter styles from Machine House earlier this month, all of which were appealing and the malt in this one reminded me of those, except with Northwest hops. The Centennial hop flavor is great, as I hoped from a fresh hop. I thoroughly enjoyed this one, my first fresh hop of the year. These are quite ephemeral in the market, but hoping to see this one again.