Three Minutes Until Midnight
Annex Ale Project

1L howler from Sherbrooke Liquor store - cuing up some classic Iron Maiden, but I'll play along and start it one minute early. My bad on the musical reference - apparently this is a collaboration with a 'new' Cowtown outfit called 'Territories'.

This beer pours a very dark, amber-edged brown colour, with two fingers of puffy, rocky, and bubbly tan head, which leaves some stellar webbed lace around the glass as it quickly sinks out of sight.

It smells of roasted, bready and doughy caramel malt, bittersweet cocoa powder, mild cafe-au-lait, muddled domestic citrus rind, and some leafy, weedy, and piney green hop bitters. The taste is gritty and grainy cereal malt, some free-range ashiness, sort of pithy chocolate wafers, faded orange and white grapefruit citrus peel, day-old coffee grounds, and more leafy, herbal, and piney hoppiness.

The carbonation is adequate in its palate-satisfying frothiness, the body a solid medium weight, and not particularly smooth, not with that char lurking about like a bad memory. It finishes trending dry, the malt, cocoa, and smoky essences presiding.

Overall - this is a prototypical version of the hybrid style, hoppy and roasted in equal measures. Full of flavour, as is to be expected from this Calgary brewery, but still not something that I can come to terms with in my own personal preferences.