Brother Bear
Belly Hop Brewing

Draft poured into a Willi Becher pint glass at Mohave Smokehouse in Red Deer. Mahogany color, roasty, malty beer. Nice representation of the style.

Appearance - Pours a mahogany brown with two fingers of foamy tan head.

Smell - toasty and roasty malts, earthy and leafy hops, cocoa, coffee bean, nuttiness, and earthy yeast.

Taste - toasty and roasty malts upfront. The earthy and leafy hops, cocoa, coffee bean, and nuttiness come through next. The earthy yeast rounds out the brew. Nice balance of flavours overall.

Mouthfeel - Medium bodied with moderate carbonation. Finishes dry with the malts, cocoa, and coffee bean lingering.

Overall - A pleasant brew that in comparison to other black ales, is very flavourful and drinkable.

473ml can - termed a 'black ale' by the brewery.

This beer pours a clear, dark red-brick brown colour, with three fingers of puffy, loosely foamy, and mildly fizzy tan head, which leaves some random dissolving snow bank pattern lace around the glass as it slowly seeps away.

It smells of toasted bready and grainy pale malt, bittersweet cocoa powder, dry cafe-au-lait, and very subtle earthy, musty, and floral hop bitters. The taste is semi-sweet, grainy and doughy cereal malt, some free-range ashiness, medium chocolate, faded day-old coffee, a hint of licorice root, and more understated leafy, earthy, and floral green hoppiness.

The carbonation is adequate in its palate-satiating frothiness, the body a decent middleweight, and generally smooth, with a wee airy creaminess evolving as things warm up a tad out of the ol' basement bar fridge. It finishes off-dry, the gently roasted malt holding tight to the lingering reins.

Overall - this comes across as a rather pleasantly rendered version of the style, full of flavour, and very evenly balanced between the char and the sweetness. I know I've been mentioning the hot weather a lot lately, but it's rainy and cooler today, so Brother Bear really hits the spot!