Nut Brown On Steroids (NBOS)
Oak Creek Brewing Co.

 

 

 

Surprisingly light, hiding its alcohol well, this Imperial version of Oak Creek's standard-issue nut brown ale is an interesting customer. High clarity, a reddish-orange burnish to its lacquered-oak brown, only moderate head out of the howler, but a high degree of tulip-retained lacing, NBOS has a nice but fairly conventional appearance—though a bit on the light side, perhaps, especially given its juiced-up nature.

Both the conventionality and the surprising lightness are not merely carried through to the flavors and textures: they're doubled-down. The oral profile is both fairly straightforward for the style—strong, bold caramel backbone; notes of nutty proteins; a dusty floor of dryly bitter hop-acids—and is somehow also fairly featherweight: not only less viscous and leaner than many regular nut browns, NBOS is far more svelte and far less syrupy than one might expect from the advertised anabolic treatment. A hulking, barrel-bodied brown this is not: it's essentially just a clean-tasting, pretty quietly-achieved abv-boost to Oak Creek's standard issue in this mode (though the dry, boozy nose presents the one hint otherwise). It's a session-to-sipper transmutation that gets the job done while remaining palatable enough in Sedona's summertime.