Cactus Head by Blood Brothers Brewing

A quick and easy review of Cactus Head, a beer from Blood Brothers Brewing that caught my eye while I was looking through the new IPAs at Sip Liquor Market.

Appearance: Nice can with a cool design. Blood Brothers tends to vary the look and feel of their packaging. Not very consistent from a branding perspective but it always looks good. This beer pours hazy yellow. Nice fluffy head with very fine bubbles that faded to a frothy film that stuck around. Medium lacing.

Aroma: Smells like white wine with a vegetal or grassy note.

Taste: Strong grapefruit and gooseberry flavours with a slightly vinous, acidic aftertaste.

Mouthfeel: Really nice, fluffy body with slightly lower carbonation.

Overall: Tasty! Blood Brothers nailed the mouthfeel for this beer which leaves me eager to try more of their hazy IPAs. For me, a soft, pillowy body is what really defines this style of beer and is the quickest way to differentiate a brewery that gets it versus one that doesn't.

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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