Filed under: commercial beer, tasting | Tags: commercail, fort collins, pomegranate wheat, rocky mountain ipa, tasting, z lager
I made another self-made sampler pack from Frugal MacDoogal from Fort Collins Brewery. They have had Fort Collins beer for a while now, but I just got around to trying them out. We tasted these the same day we tasted the beer from Great Divide Brewing. As you can tell from the slowly degrading quality of the bottle pictures, the amount of beer we drank up to this point may have impacted our ability to accurately judge the beer. Alison was officially drunk.
Major Tom’s Pomegranate Wheat pours a pale yellow with a light head and heavy, audible carbonation. The aroma is yeasty and smells lightly of berries. The palate opens with ample carbonation on the tongue followed by a soapy flavor, some tartness, and a light tang in the aftertaste. Not great.
Z Lager pours and reddish/tan color with a clear aroma of grain husks, smoked beech wood, and kalamata olives. I can distinctly smell the beech wood. The flavor opens with toasted malt, then merges bitter and beech wood smoke together in the middle of the palate, and ends with that same kalamata olive flavor from the aroma. Geoff first identified the kalamata olive aroma in this beer, and once he said that, I could clearly smell and taste olives. I actually didn’t dislike this beer, which is what I anticipated from myself after having recently tried smoked beer for the first time. I think I enjoyed the lighter character of the beech wood smoke over the darker smoke flavor of the O’Fallon smoked porter I tried. Perhaps I just tolerate smoke better in a lager than in a porter. I’d like to try this again sometime as a full pint.
Rocky Mountain IPA pours an orange/copper color with an ample head and plenty of hop aroma. Citrusy C hop aroma clearly present with grapefruit dominant followed by tangerine. The palate is moderately bitter for an IPA, not excessive, and the finish is mostly dry with just a hint of sweetness. The dryness of the finish is much like a bottle of Sierra Nevada Pale Ale. Bitterness builds in the aftertaste. This is a good example of a standard American IPA, no complaints. This was clearly the best of the tasting session of Fort Collins and Great Divide beers.
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