Noche De Los Alebrijes - Half Pints Brewing Company

biboergosum

Alberta (Canada)

4.03/5  rDev +12.9%
look: 4.5 | smell: 4 | taste: 4 | feel: 4 | overall: 4

650ml bottle, another swell souvenir brought back from Winnipeg by my colleagues in arms Sam and Katie, cool kids that they are. Prost! (Or maybe Salaud?)

Apparently this is an ode to the Oaxocan (yeah, I had to look it up too) carved wooden folk art pieces, usually representing brightly coloured fantasy creatures. I get a strong resemblance to Mexican wrestling get-ups, but maybe that's just me.

This beer pours a clear, deep, dark ruby hue, with three roiling fingers of tight puffy beige head, which leaves some frizzy broken arch lace profiles around the glass as it duly recedes.

It smells of bready, biscuity malt, toasted mixed nuts, bitter cocoa, mildly sweet vanilla, some dusty fruitiness, and earthy, musty hops. The taste is sweet, nutty, bready malt, stronger, and less bitter chocolate, a subtle black fruitiness, a mildly metallic cinnamon spiciness, and rather understated noble earthy, leafy hops.

The carbonation is restrained, but still nice and supportive, the body a sturdy medium weight, and deftly smooth, no qualms there. It finishes off-dry, the bready malt, oily nuts (heh), cocoa, and soft fruit really running the show here.

A quite decent malty, full-flavoured lager, in the German dunkel style, by way of southern Mexico, though I'm not exactly sure what the latter's influence is intended to be. Anyway, an agreeable foreign indulgence for a north of the 49th operation, and we, its supporters.

Serving type: bottle

10-23-2012 02:26:17 | More by biboergosum