100 Beers, 100 Days: Day #5
Yesterday, we were in Portsmouth NH doing wedding stuff. While we were there, we stopped in at the Portsmouth Brewery for lunch and some beers. I didn’t get any beer to go with lunch, but I did get a couple of singles to go and a pint glass. Here’s the first review of one of the singles. The other will follow in a couple days. I want to avoid getting too many from local brew pubs since very few people will ever get to try them. But you can’t avoid that entirely, so here’s one.
The website says it’s a “Belgian style pale ale hopped to the XX-treme”. I don’t buy that. From the name, I expected an English style best bitter, perhaps more hopped because of the name and the Americanness of it all. Perhaps my expectations colored my perceptions of the beer, but the only things that made it even seen to be a Belgian style were the relatively high level of carbonation and a residual sweetness perhaps due to some candy sugar.
The 22 ounce bottle with hand written paper label (which I can reuse for bottling homebrew) pours a slightly cloudy amber color, with little head and quite a bit of bubble activity. I find lots of hops in the aroma and taste. The hops hit on the front of the tongue and quickly fade by the time the beer hits the back of the mouth. It definitely does have the XX part of the title, though it’s still nowhere close to the crazy IPAs and pale ales we’re used to in this country. There’s a malty sweetness and bread present in the flavor.
Looking at the bottom of the bottle, I see a yeast cake present. Cool. I originally thought the high level of carbonation could be due to forced carbonation for bottling, since Portsmouth Brewery mostly does kegging for their brewpub. However, the yeast presence killed that theory. Now that’s something I can respect. I think the only Belgian flavor I detected was some extra sweetness in the aftertaste, which is indicative of the addition of some candy sugar, perhaps. That’s a common thing to do in Belgian styles to up the alcohol content and lighten the flavor.
In summary, this is a pretty crappy review but it was written over the span of six or eight hours with lots of people coming and going the whole time. I found this to be a highly enjoyable, relatively light bodied beer that I could enjoy several of in an evening. It seemed to be a little higher in alcohol than the last several beers I have tried but the bottle didn’t indicate an ABV so it’s probably worth being careful with it. I just don’t think it really fell into the style they claim it to be. I’m still very excited about trying other brews from Portsmouth Brewery.