Yellow Truck Complicated Blond Lager
Draught Dodger Brewery

Tallboy from the LCBO; dated May 29 2017 and served well chilled. That's a pretty old canning date for something that just showed up on shelves (locally) last week, but we'll see how she goes.

Pours a sunny, crystal clear golden-yellow colour, with just over one finger's width of frothy, foamy white head seated atop. It wilts swiftly, eroding almost entirely over the next 3-4 minutes, at which point it has been replaced with a smooth, thin cap and collar. Minimal lace; looks like a bog standard Euro lager. The nose is at least clean, but otherwise fairly bland and quite muted - I'm only getting a few light notes of grain husk and cereal sweetness, and maybe a faint wisp of grassy hops. I usually try to remain optimistic up to this point in the review, but frankly it's not looking too good.

The flavours aren't very compelling, but they're largely unobjectionable. Pale barley malts and cereal grain sweetness are the driving forces behind the profile, constrained only by the grassy, floral, somewhat spicy hop bitterness that comes through on the back end. Off-dry finish with some lingering cereal grain sweetness; not getting any of that citrus/orange mentioned on the back label, which is too bad because this brew desperately needs something else to make it interesting. Light in body, with sharp, aggressive carbonation that needles the tongue relentlessly with each sip. Easy to drink quickly.

Final Grade: 3.36, a mediocre B-. Yellow Truck's back label describes it as a 'medium-bodied steam beer' - and while that might have been what they were going for, I wouldn't say it's a very accurate description of what they ended up shipping out. Indeed, if I were blindfolded and someone handed me a glass of this - and then proceeded to insist that it was actually a Euro lager along the lines of Grolsch or Harp - I'd be seriously inclined to believe them. A truly run-of-the-mill lager - there might not be any glaring flaws, but there aren't any real redeeming attributes, either. Sure, it's kinda refreshing and not a challenge to drink, but that's only the bare minimum requirement for this type of beer. At 3 bucks a can? It's barely even worth the tick.

 

Thin head, clear, and it tasted like Canadian. Not a compliment. Would not recommend.

Overall a good tasting lager. Crisp and clean tasting. The Saaz and Herkules hops give this brew a European flavour. Good for afternoon tastings. Canned from Beer Store.

Can - pours a pale clear gold with a 2 finger white cap that reduces to a surface lace quickly. Aroma is bready, lightly musty and has some herbal notes. Flavor is malt forward with a good chew of bready-biscuity malts in front very rich malting, then the saaz hops show in the clean bittering finish....nice hop bite at the end - certainly not "complicated" but a good quaffer.