Glory Days West Coast ISA by Cabin Brewing & Ol‘ Beautiful Brewing

Appearance: Glory Days is a really good looking beer that poured clear and golden into one of my Spiegalau IPA glasses. The head disappeared quickly and never really returned though it left some light lacing. I suspect the packaging is an amalgam of the two brands that collaborated on this beer but it comes off looking like one of Cabin’s weaker can designs.

Aroma: Smell is overripe tropical fruit. It's very nice.

Taste: And it tastes like it smells. Tropical fruit. Maybe a hint of grain and just a barely perceptible touch of grass or other vegetal flavour. This is a tasty beer.

Mouthfeel: It's an ISA. So it features a lighter malt bill. Carbonation is spot on but there's a thinness to the beer that's expected from an India Session Ale, which is a lighter form of IPA. Session in this case refers to a drinking session—meaning that, unlike a stronger IPA, you can drink more than one or two at a time because its less filling and contains less alcohol.

Overall: This is a faithful throwback to the final days of the original IPA craze—when IPAs were still clear but brewers had started to eschew crystal malt and swap out the old citrus and pine flavoured hops for newer, fruitier varieties. IPAs from this time were lighter in colour, less bitter and had entirely new hop profiles. ISAs or Session IPAs were also ascendant during this time. So overall, I think this beer hits the mark but I’m just not a big fan of the lighter body and thinner mouthfeel that is unavoidable when you’re targeting an ABV under 5%.

Rating: 3.5 out of 5

ESB by Sea Change Brewing

I recently found out this blog ranks highly in search engine results for craft beer reviews so it seems the onus is on me to revive it. To that end, I'm going to start adding new reviews and looking for another contributor or two. Today I'm reviewing ESB by Sea Change , a local Edmonton brewery. I purchased this as part of six pack of singles I assembled myself at Sip Liquor Market , a great little beer-focused shop not far from my home. Is this an authentic attempt at an ESB or English Special Bitter? Read on and find out. Appearance: ESB comes in a 473mL can. The packaging features a custom illustration very much in line with Sea Change's highly consistent design language. Once poured, I can see that this beer is much darker than I expected. I anticipated copper or amber and what I got is brown. Visually it reminds me of a British brown ale more akin to Newcastle than a quintessential English bitter. Head retention was little to none and there was no lacing left on the gl...

Alive in the Superunknown by The Establishment Brewing Company

Is The Establishment Alberta's best brewer of hazy IPAs? It's an entirely valid question that has no definite answer as of yet. But I'll start this review by stating that this beer makes a strong case for yes . In my experience, hazy or New England-style IPAs tend to fall between 6 and 7% ABV. Anything higher than 7.5% is frequently classified as a double or imperial IPA. Alive in the Superunknown comes in at 8.3% and The Establishment has purposefully labeled it an Imperial Hazy IPA. The thing about hazy IPAs is that they don't always fare well with the additional grain bill required to hit a higher alcohol content. The West Coast-style IPAs of the 2000s and early 2010s handled a higher ABV quite well by offsetting the additional body and alcohol burn with blistering pine and citrus hop flavours thanks to old school varieties like Cascade, Centennial, Columbus and others. But hazy IPAs are more delicate in some ways. Extra body and alcohol burn are not characteristics...

Down the New Zealand Pilsner Rabbit Hole

There are many different beer styles but the majority are well-established and well-known to brewers. Their characteristics and the ingredients that comprise them are generally understood and accepted. That said, the craft beer explosion over the past decade or two has led to an evolution and expansion of traditional beer canon. New styles have emerged. Some have trended then waned—take white IPAs or India Pale Lagers for instance—while others seem to have completely redefined the brewing industry. (Yes, I'm talking about hazy or New England-style IPAs and pale ales.) New Zealand (NZ) Pilsner is a relatively new and seemingly only loosely defined style. Most articles on the style have been written in the past three years. Popular primarily in its country of origin and among homebrewers, its defining features seem to be that it is brewed mostly with Pilsner malt and NZ-grown hops. Much has been written about hops from NZ, especially Nelson Sauvin , a particularly standout vari...

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