Hunter Pale Ale
Potters Hotel & Brewery (Hunter Beer Co)

 

Had on tap at the brewery 09/07/11.

Pours a pale amber colour; clear with no bead. Head is off-white, fairly dense but no real retention. Decent lace. Looks OK.

Nose is quite nice, with pleasant citric hop notes dominating, in a weak kind of way. Lemon and kiwi on there and a touch of passionfruit. Light and subtle for the most part but it's enjoyable and fresh like a good pale ale nose should be.

Taste is actually a bit flabby upfront. Sort of one-note malt palate that lazily carries the palate through to the finish. Caramelly malt with no real up and down. Hops come through late-mid and they're welcome but insubstantial, not robust enough to save the day, and the flavour glances slightly off target to form a metallic and mildly dirty bitterness. OK overall, but really could have done more with what they had.

Fair amount of fizz, not overblown though and decent body.

Yeah, I'm a bit disappointed with this overall, but it's pleasant drinking. Just could have been better.

750 ML poured into a SA perfect pint

A-- Pain in the butt getting the plastic champaign style cork off. Attractive smoke came from the bottle though. Poured a dark honey color with tints of orange in the sides. Very big and well retained light brown head. Almost a good three fingers worth head. Shows a lot of carbonation and small bubbles on the side. Very nice lacing to this.

S-- Orange, lemon, some grapefruit but a whole lot of citrus. Some honey in this I also think. Very crisp and light smelling but refreshing.

T-- Very hop forward. Quite aggressive. Lots of grapefruit taste followed by lemon. No real malt taste to this. All about hops in this.

M-- Well carbonated, creamy and filling in the mouth. Lots of bitterness to this but finishes dry and clean with a touch of bitterness.

D-- It is aggressive I will say that much. Nice beer but needs a bit of malt. As a 330 or 355 ML would be excellent but as a 750 would be a bit much to finish. This is a sipper beer. A good one at that. Low ABV is good but, wow, very aggressive and a lot of hops in this. Will very much seek this out again. Much closer to the West Coast USA monsters but once again needs the malt to offset.

An american pale ale with a ton of hop bitterness. Nice and bright with a golden shine. Reasonable malt balance but probably too strong for most punters. If micros must make an APA i'd prefer they good the whole hog (like this one) rather than dance around the edges.

Amber, dark honey colour.
Citrusy, green hops, caramel & honey notes.
Full body, but with very distinctive "campari" flavour, almost medicine-like. Very strong bitterness, which I think is a bit overbalanced. If there ever was a style called "American Bitter", this would certainly qualify. I think there needs to be a bit more malt sweetness to counter the "bitters", or reducing the bittering hops. Not for the faint hearted...