Napa Wood Fired Pizzeria Harvest Basil Brown Ale
CB Craft Brewers

On tap at Napa Wood Fired Pizzeria in Rochester, NY.

This one pours a dark-ish brown color, with a small white head, and lots of lacing.

This smells like very herbal basil, as I guess I should have expected. There's some smoke and very light breadiness, too.

This is an interesting idea, but since it's this brewery, it doesn't work. It's so thin and watery, and the malt character is not rich enough to stand up to the herbal or smokey flavors. There's some spicy hop character, which does make sense with the flavors presented. As it warms, the basil becomes too strongly forward in the flavor.

This is very light bodied, and kind of astringent on the finish. I want this to be much creamier.

This is not all that great. This is par for the course for CB Craft Brewers, though.

 

This brew was shared at a tasting with some friends, poured out from a CB’s growler into generic pint glasses. It showed a ruddy medium brown coloring, holding a wispy, soapy, soy sauced colored head of one finger. This lasted briefly before disappearing into drippy foam dots around the glass. No haze or sediment was noted, and carbonation appeared to be medium. The nose met a blend of clean brown and roasty chocolate malts, mild dustiness, sweet corn, aluminum foil, soft medicinal phenols mixing with equally soft and peppery booze, simple soapy hops, dry sponge, cranberry and pear fruitiness, cotton and fresh tobacco, and if you really strained your senses, you got this organic, leafy, green basil spiciness. This became much, much more apparent with warmth, giving a richer and more savory, and serious, basil and oregano spice. It actually smelled quite a bit like pizza at certain moments!! The taste followed the same course, beginning with sauce soy saltiness, toffee sugars, rich brown grain, heavier roasted coffee and chocolate maltiness, tomato and bile acidity, white chalk, corny and brown rice adjuncts, mild milky lactics, red grape fruitiness, molasses metallics, light nectary hops, and orange zest, with a finishing wash of that same spicy, green basil note. Actually, through the taste, the latter came across in a much more cooling fashion, as would a more zesty minty leafiness. The body was medium, and the carbonation was medium. Each sip gave oily slurp and smack, with decent enough cream and froth to the lip. The mouth was left with surprising tannic and chalky dryness through the end of the swallow. The abv was appropriate, and the beer drank back easily.

Overall, this was certainly a unique beer. Although we haven’t had the opportunity to sample some of the more well-known “pizza” beers seen across BeerAdvocate, this was a nice surprise. We shouldn’t really call it a “pizza” beer, as it is simply a brown ale with basil added, but brewed for a local pizza establishment. To this end, they are pleasantly successful. The base brown ale is hearty, warming, malt-forward, and relatively rich and quaffable, while they float these curious overtones of resinous greens, but not in the way we are most used to through heavy hoppiness. Rather, we get these truly authentic waves of basil, although through the taste, and with more warmth, it tastes closer to a spearmint that even cools your mouth a touch. This gives it a more savory quality than, say, hopping it would, but it is refreshing in a unique and fun way. This won’t be a fridge regular for many, but again, is something worth sipping.