Beer – #254 – Pretty Things / Yeastie Boys – Our Turn, Your Turn

Took my eye in the shop, this is a Pretty Things / Yeastie Boys Our Turn, Your Turn collaboration.  Brewed at Buzzards Bay Brewing in the style of a Wheat Ale, or American Pale Wheat Ale. and that happened in  Cambridge, Massachusetts USA, not Cambridge Waikato NZ, where it is more about Horses than Beer.

A 1 pint 6fl Oz bottle, or 650 ml in old money, of a 6.5% ABV beer, making it 3.5 Standard drink units in NZ oh and around 210 calories.

YEAST: a blend of English & German ale strains. BITTERNESS: was meant to be around 25 but drinks like its 40+. INGREDIENTS: pale malt, red wheat, linden flowers, Bramling Cross and New Zealand Southern Cross hops (lots of Southern Cross hops actually). CHARACTER: pale, slight acidity from wheat, a quick drinker, lots of pungent dry hop character with the Linden flower just beneath.

ok. alright then. ready, set ……

Bittery hoppy aroma on opening. Pours a hazy golden pale yellow with a whiff of a head. The subtle hop aroma persists though.

To the drinking of this and it is intially very bitter on the palate, surprisingly so, which might account for why you’d think this was a bitter,  but then with a fluffy carry. Even the aroma does not hint at the punch in the mouth of bitter that you get with this.

But it is confusingly pale too, and wheat beer is what you sort of kind of expect to perhaps get, you don’t.

This then is really confusing to me, because there isn’t a paring between the appearance and the aroma, and then the aroma and the taste, and then the look and the other thing that doesn’t pair with that anyway.

It is however  a jolly nice beer, with the freshness of the hops really standing out, I wouldn’t be keen to get a slightly older one of these, I don’t think it’d end well for some reason.  I’m thinking that this would be just a bit ok for a few in the afternoon, and would leave you feeling no pain in short order, but that you’d have enjoyed getting to that.

The pdubyah-o-meter is pleased to  be called to rate this, and does so at 7.5 making it at the top end of better than good and just under the great. The whisky head has persisted and there is a decent and goodly amount of lacing in the glass, all things that are pleasing to me.

As I’ve drunk more of this and it’s warmed a bit in the glass, as it does, it has retained that fluffy mouthfeel, and subtle bitterness has remained subtle and the length and carry of the taste has remained.  It is however confusing and a bit of a quandary of a beer. I’d buy it again because I’d like to think that the freshness and bite of the hops would persist, but I can’t see how the less of them would be the more of this as a beer.

Music Tonight was c/- Sweet Billy Pilgrim, click on the link and get yourself a fairly decent album of music that will keep you entertained.

Being summer of course the BBQ has to be had, tonight though back to ‘steak’, which after last nights Chicken stuffed with garlic mushrooms, wrapped in bacon seems a bit life just as ordinary.

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