Delighted to get hold of this one fom a recent Bruisin’ Ales mail order. Can as shown in the BA db picture.
Popped the top with very little fanfare. Aggressive pour leads to an initially high head but this fades to give a nice, spotty film on the surface of the beer. Some lace.
Body is a cloudy orange that is a tad too pale for my liking.
Nose is a little light grass but has some sweetness in there too.
Nice upfront mild bitterness and a solid malt presence to hold the whole thing together. Some nice biscuit malts too.
It feels a touch over-carbonated to me, but perhaps it is unfair to compare this to a cask ESB from the UK, but nevertheless a bit prickly in the mouth. Finishes with a touch of residual sugar which is OK with me.
Easy drinking, but cans (or bottles for that matter) don’t show off the style to the greatest degree. I’d like to try this on cask but essentially there is zero chance of that.
Drinks well considering everything and is (on the face of it) sessionable, but without knowledge of the ABV, who knows?
A decent stab at the style, but as is ALWAYS the case this style ALWAYS comes up short with American brewers and when not on cask. Having said that I get so few good ESB’s these days I shouldn’t complain too much. Decent and glad to have tried it.