Lee's Liquid Dinner - Sonoran Brewing Company

mactrail

California

2.84/5  rDev -11.5%
look: 3.5 | smell: 3 | taste: 2.75 | feel: 3.25 | overall: 2.5

This pours a slightly hazy coppery amber, which is quite attractive with a thin mustache of foam. An earthy and unpromising smell. Average carbonation.

As I tasted the first sip, I thought, "not another bacterial Sonoran." Eventually I read the ingredients list, and I was convinced that maybe that is parsnip flavor along with the other fruits and nuts. The orange peel stands out more. If it's chestnuts, I can certainly taste that sweet, nuttiness. However, it seems to be brewed to imitate a beer that's gone off. I don't care what it's brewed with, there is still that acidic, bitterish, dirty taste.

From the 22 oz bottle purchased at Whole Foods in Chandler.

Serving type: bottle

04-13-2013 05:44:34 | More by mactrail

Phelps

Arizona

3.58/5  rDev +11.5%
look: 4 | smell: 4 | taste: 3.5 | feel: 3 | overall: 3.5

For Lee's Liquid Dinner, the third in Sonoran's four-part series of collaborations with local chefs, the brewery tapped Lee Hillson, the Iron Chef participant and former executive chef at T. Cook's who's now designing dishes for The Phoenician resort. Hillson decided to go with a few helpings of his favorite veggie, honey-roasted parsnips. Cranberries, orange peel, chestnuts and hazelnuts were also added to the English brown ale base, accentuating the beer's nuttiness and roast.

Sonoran and the chosen chefs must be applauded for their choice of beer style throughout this series -- each of the beers released thus far have perfectly complemented the season. As a brown ale, Lee's Liquid Dinner is a brilliant style choice for the transition to fall. The warm temperature here still calls for something more refreshing and with gentler alcohol burn than, say, a stout, which this 5-percent ABV brew delivers. Its gentle nuttiness also works very well with the flavors of the season.

Drawn by local artist Ellison Keomaka, the design takes inspiration from chef Hillson's food choices as well as his love of horror films -- hence Lee's diabolical expression.

In a pint glass, soft haze clouds a copper-colored liquid under a soft tan head like just-picked cotton.

Rub your nose in it and you'll find a majority of Hillson's ingredient additions -- honey-drizzled biscuit, a touch of tart cranberry, the toasted nuts mingling with the base beer's established aromas. It's a wonderful, autumnal aroma that'll slow down your drinking speed as you continually stop to admire it.

But drink I must, and so I move on to the flavor. Funny thing about this brew: It can be quaffed without much affecting your taste buds at all. A light, ethereal body combines with nearly-not-there carbonation to create a very fickle flavor. The trick is to let this one sit on your tongue a while, which opens the liquid: sweet biscuits and roasted parsnips up front, slight bitterness and a bone-dry finish after the finish.

Serving type: bottle

11-22-2012 05:07:35 | More by Phelps