Heart of Tartness
Annex Ale Project

650ml bottle - a 'honey lemon sour', with, once again, no further info about the product at hand on the otherwise wordy label. Further sleuthing turns up that this is a kettle sour.

This beer pours a clear, medium golden yellow colour, with four fingers of puffy, finely foamy, and somewhat fizzy bone-white head, which leaves some spotty and sudsy lace around the glass as it quickly books it outta Dodge.

It smells of fresh-squeezed lemon juice, with a dollop of clover honey mixed into it, some mild grainy and crackery pale malt, subtle yeasty notes, and very tame earthy, musty, and floral hop bitters. The taste is sour lemon rind, honeyed crackers, gritty and grainy cereal malt, a hint of lactic tartness, ephemeral yeast, and more well understated herbal, leafy, and musky floral green hoppiness.

The carbonation is rather active in its palate-taunting frothiness, the body an adequate middleweight, and sort of smooth, as that citric acridity takes more than a minor toll at this point in the game. It finishes trending dry, the honey starting to fade, while the various acidic characters keep the party going long past last call.

Overall - this comes across as a very well-rendered version of the sour sub-style, with the tart/sweet interplay of the lemon and honey adjuncts quite pleasing to the senses. And with no suggestion as of yet of the extra 2 and change points of ABV, I will continue to enjoy the rest of this offering like I didn't even know they existed!