Dark Mild
Bastone Brewery

 

This brew was served from the tap at Bastone in Royal Oak, Michigan. It arrived in a generic 22 oz. pint glass, showing a watered chestnut brown coloring. It held a one finger head of sandy foam, holding decent retention into flecked islands of lacing around the glass. A chill haze obscured clarity, but no sediment was noted. Carbonation appeared to be moderate. The aroma was rich with toffee sugars, wet and moldy raw barley, coiny metallics, honey, nectarine fruitiness, lactic creaminess, brown and deeply roasted amber malts, printer ink, maraschino cherry fruitiness, oiled grassiness, wood lacquer, concrete, and mineral sparkle. The flavoring showed soy sauce saltiness, cooled banana bread esters sweetness, coffee and brown malt roast, coca cola sugariness and syrupiness, walnut oils, powdered barley and raw oat, copper, figgy pudding warmth, cinnamon and black pepper spiciness, soured ale yeastiness, and bitter cocoa powder. The body was light to medium, and the carbonation was light, but with improved froth on the swirl around the mouth. Froth and cream were otherwise absent, and the beer felt thin to the lip. It was otherwise cooling, and quite frankly, boring. The abv was appropriate, and it drank back easily enough.

Overall, this was a rather predictable seasonal from Bastone, as we’ve come to expect. The flavoring is there, and fine at that, but they really take the “mild” aspect of the style too far. Yes, it is quaffable and sessionable, but the base flavors become watered and tedious by the end, leaving you little to grip onto. The feel was really its ultimate downfall, as although those flavors and aromas were there, they too, were left with nothing much to substantiate them or keep them stuck to the palate. They just washed away, easily forgotten. It’s hard, because with such an award-winning pedigree we’ve come to expect so much from them, and hate to be so harsh to a local great. That said, this is not the first time we’ve felt this way about one of their seasonals, and just hope they can keep up with the ever growing Michigan market.