Follow Sean Inman to the best in craft beer
Last week, Los Angeles Ale Works released two pale ales with artwork by Brady Smith.
Here are the beer details straight from the brewery:
Cannonball Kid (Juicy Pale Ale 6.0%) features El Dorado and Cascade hops. Resinous notes of grapefruit and mango gummy bears.
Pugapalooza (Pale Ale 6.0%) sports Sabro, Sultana, and El Dorado hops to lead you down the road to tropical notes of guava and passionfruit.
Next up in the five part series of reviews of Partake Brewing is the Pale Ale. Check out the first review of the Blonde Ale which was an inauspicious start to the five beer reviews.
The Pale Ale is much better. Firstly, the aroma pops off with light grassy and pine notes. The body is a little watery but has none of the weird “underdone” notes that the Blonde had. There is a refreshing smack of bitterness here and it is quite nice. A bit one dimensional but that dimension is solid.
If you are in the Inglewood area today, you might want to check out Three Weavers and their latest Friday / Brewery Only release. “Yakima Bloom is a nod to the hard working hop growers of the Northern Hemisphere – our fresh hop pale ale is made with freshly picked Citra hops and is perfect for celebrating the end of the harvest season.” We don’t get the level of fresh hop beers that Oregon and Washington get so, hop on it.
Eagle Rock Brewery is always moving and now they have two new cans coming out on March 20th.
The Future is Unclear – hazy IPA loaded with Mosaic, Citra, Simcoe, and Idaho 7. Available on draft and in 4-packs of 16oz cans.
3056 Pale Ale 03 – This release of our hop study pale ale featuring Chinook, Cascade and Mosaic hops will be available in 4-packs of 16oz cans.
I was beer shopping and finding quite a few new Artifex beers in the coolers when I thought I saw some beers that were upside down. My eyes were deceiving me though. Artifex’s logo is similar in font to Ventura’s MadeWest.
I ended up with a pale and IPA and now is the time to render a verdict. Which can would I buy again?
Pale Ale – Pours a clear and dark yellow. Aroma is very herbal and grassy. Nice dank bite with a spritz of carbonation at the start that rounds into a lovely peach note. That bitterness sticks to the side of the mouth long after the sip is over. Right at the end is a wheat toast note. The combination is nice if stronger than expected for a Pale Ale.
IPA – Pours an orange color. Aroma has a touch of citrus but somewhat mellow. Picking up grapefruit here in the flavor, it is predominant. More silky than the Pale Ale. Less dynamic in certain ways too.
I think the peach notes puts the Pale over the top. Or maybe I don’t cotton to hop 07270.
Los Angeles has actually gotten rain this month. Nowhere near what the Pacific Northwest endured but it is a lot greener on the ground and grey in the skies which makes the press sample that I received from Ninkasi Brewing all the more appropriate.
Pacific Rain Pale Ale is brewed with Citra, Simcoe, Mosaic and Nugget hops along with exotic lava-filtered water. At first a little hop bite in the aroma but then the grain takes over. Really malty like almost fully cooked bread. For all the hops advertised on the label, this beer is really quite British in the subtle hop notes. Is it the lava water that is making the difference? The more I drink, the more ESB Pacific Rain is to me.
As breweries expand distribution, I sometimes get samples sent to me to review, usually though, not saying “Sample” right on the bottle. Baja Brewing sent me there to-be renamed Peyote Pale Ale to test out.
Here are my thoughts…
I am of two minds on this beer. It is firmly in the class of the maltier side of pale ale. All well and good once I re-calibrated my tastebuds and my mind. There is a nice caramel note without the sweetness that I think plays well with the hops. But those hops are just a little too buried for me. As it warms, the beer opens up though and some fruit notes knock on the door.
It would be educational to me to try this beer fresher at the source to see if a little more bitter brightness would come through and ameliorate the caramel notes.
With world governments at a standstill regarding getting Syrian refugees to safety it is heartening to see craft beer make a positive step into the breach.
Mikkeller launched ’HELP’. Proceeds from he sale of the beer will “go to The Danish Refugee Counsel and the organizations working with Syrian refugee children in Lebanon.” Launch date is today.
“The project was inspired by a photo series in Aftonbladet by Swedish photographer Magnus Wennman. A series of heart-breaking images showed sleeping or exhausted refugee children without a bed, a roof over their head, a homeland and in some cases without parents.”
The beer will be distributed and sold worldwide and the plan is to brew it every year to continue the support.
Despite recent reports about how affected (or unaffected) people are by gluten, it is always good to have choice for those who truly can’t handle it and a choice that doesn’t taste like a weird science experiment.
Enter New Belgium and their Glutiny line which includes a blonde ale and a pale ale…..
Glutiny pours a light orange color from the biker labeled bottle. I can’t quite pin the aroma down. Orange flavored gum maybe. Not a bad thing but different. The taste is light touching thin at points but like the Omission beers it doesn’t taste funny like the completely gluten free beers. It has a nice bitterness that could probably be ramped up even more. Final notes are tannic and tea like.
I will have to see how the golden ale stacks up but this is a nice XPA in my mind.
Founders bottle release reviews started with the Centennial IPA and now move on to the Dry Hopped Pale Ale.
The Pale pours a clear orange with a head that is foamy initially but quickly settles down to a small rim of white bubbles.It is orange and bready on the nose.
And then a good sting of hops strikes you at the top of each sip. This beer doesn’t have a load of IBU’s but it comes across as quite bitter with a note of orange peel.
It is more bracing than many pale ales and for that matter many IPA’s and I find that to be refreshing.