The Koehler Brewery

I was at Frugal MacDoogal’s last week and picked up a self-made sampler from Great Divide Brewing Company. I hadn’t seen Great Divide beers for sale in Nashville before, so I thought I would give them a try. I ended up with a couple of bottles of Samurai Ale, Wild Raspberry Ale, and Denver Pale Ale.

Geoff, Alison, and Charlotte came over and we had a tasting session. It’s way easier to taste beer with a group of people. You don’t have to drink the entire bottle, so you can taste a far greater variety of beer. I’m also willing to try things I might not otherwise try since I don’t have to drink the entire thing. It’s nice to discuss the beers; it makes it much easier to develop an opinion when you can talk about what you are tasting and smelling.

Samurai Ale poured a very pale, hazy yellow with a minimal head and plenty of fizzy carbonation. The aroma is lightly grainy, but there is only a slight aroma at all despite all those bubbles. The drink opens with a slight, clean sweetness, but generally resembles water. A slight fruity flavor develops and the drink ends with some bitterness. I assume the clean/watery body is a result of the rice used in brewing the beer. It has that distinctly Budweiser feel. I’d say this tastes a lot like a slightly hoppier Budweiser despite being an ale. Not very exciting.

Wild Raspberry Ale poured a reddish-purple and looked remarkably like a glass of iced tea. The beer smelled like raspberry candy, sweet and fruity. The flavor is exactly like raspberry syrup but with far less sweetness and with a light body; I’d say it tastes something like raspberry Kool-Aid. Stephanie thought it tasted like raspberry cough medicine with a lighter body. I think I’ve had too many things flavored with raspberries (candy, medicine, whatever) to really enjoy a beer flavored with them. Pass.

Denver Pale Ale pours an orange, tan color with a moderate head. The aroma smells like canned vegetables, which I understand to be DMS (Dimethyl Sulfide), a common off flavor/aroma in beer. I’ve always wondered about DMS, but I smelled it clearly in this beer. I think it smelled mostly like canned green beans. I got zero hop aroma. Maybe there was something wrong with the bottles I bought, as I find lots of discussion of hop aroma and no discussion of DMS on RateBeer. The beer opens with hop bitterness followed by a light malt body and finishes with bitterness in the back of the mouth. Basically, something was wrong with this beer; it tasted like a pale ale from a bad brew pub. I’d try it again to make sure I didn’t get a bad bottle, but I also think that there are enough american pale ale’s out there that all basically taste the same, and this one was not one of the better ones.

So overall I was definitely not impressed by Great Divide. I’m glad I didn’t have to drink a whole pint of any of these beers and wouldn’t really buy them again. Like I said, I might try the DPA again to verify my first impressions, but I think that I am done with these beers.