Full Squeeze
Alley Kat Brewing Company

 

341ml bottle, subtitled 'a celebration of Edmonton's Pride', and obviously made in support of this year's festival of the same name. For those not in the know - this is a blend of the brewery's Full Moon Pale Ale, and their Main Squeeze Grapefruit Ale.

This beer pours a clear, pale golden amber colour, with three fingers of puffy, finely foamy, and creamy off-white head, which leaves a bit of low-lying cirrus cloud lace around the glass as it evenly subsides.

It smells of zesty fresh-squeezed grapefruit juice, gritty and grainy pale malt, faint earthy yeast esters, a further understated semi-sweet breadiness, and hard to really pin down leafy, weedy, and piney hop bitters. The taste is bready and doughy pale malt, mixed domestic citrus fruit - white grapefruit, navel orange, and maybe a soupcon of aged lemon - still present, but duly understated brewing yeast, and further leafy, herbal, and mildly floral green hoppiness.

The carbonation is quite light on its frothy and fancy-free feet, the body a sturdy enough medium weight, and generally smooth, the hoppy and fruity essences, while still heady, are not so astringent as to be a cause of concern here. It finishes on a mild drying bender, the malt starting to bleed out, while the acerbic citrusy hops keep a local version of a stiff upper lip going strong.

Overall, this seems exactly what one might expect if you dumped a bottle of each of the input offerings from Alley Kat into the same glass, i.e. like a more citrusy version of Full Moon, really, which is what I thought of Main Squeeze in the first place, but this one follows by about a half measure further, for the reasons given. Refreshing, in the end, and well worthy of pounding back as those dandy floats roll by (we fucking wish, eh?).