Beer: Surly Brewing Bender
Brewery Location: Brooklyn Center, Minnesota
Beer Style: American Brown Ale
ABV: 5.10%
This is my second beer from Surly. I really enjoyed Furious when I had it, and was happy to get some more in trade. I wrote before that Surly is another company that is exclusively canning their beer and not bottling it. I have no problem at all with beers that come from a can. I like the 16oz cans that Surly is using. I honestly think that there will be many more brewers that will be at least partially moving to some canned beer. I see companies always makings bottles, but also putting some of their lineup in cans. It is easier to ship, pack, and costs less for brewers, and also I think that as the craft beer movement continues to get bigger consumers will demand it. That is just my take on that though.
Bender pours with a very dark brown body with a two finger frothy tan head on it. It left great lacing that lasted the entire beer. The nose is earthy and nutty with caramel undertones with loads of chocolaty malt coming through. The flavor profile is a big surprise for a brown ale. The malt base with the chocolate and caramel is coming through very strong. Secondary flavors also include grassy hops that go from earthy to an almost slight pine that seems to fade in and out with each drink. As the beer warms I get some bittersweet coffee and vanilla beans in the flavor profile as well. The mouthfeel on this beer is creamy and velvety smooth that leaves just a slightly dry finish. The drinkability is very top-notch on this offering and at this ABV is quite sessionable.
In terms of being a brown ale this beer is impressive. I didn't really find this to be a brown ale though. It has the complexity of quality porter and the hop profile of an APA. Whatever style this falls into I just know it is a tasty offering, and I look forward to trying to get my hands on some more of this beer.
Cheers!
Matt
6 comments:
I think you're absolutely right about canning, Matt.
I am an unabashed fan of brown ales and think they're vastly underappreciated in the craft beer world. There are some really good ones out there--Bell's Best Brown and Avery Ellie's Brown come to mind. The Surly sounds wonderful as well.
Yeah, agreed about canning as well. I wonder if distributors might be the dominant force in the transition, though. With rising energy costs, transporting fluids (which are relatively heavy) is becoming very expensive. Any way they can reduce the weight of the product they're shipping will greatly help their bottom line.
This wasn't your garden variety brown ale, but still somehow was just a great drinking session able brew. I like the smoothness of it from the addition of oatmeal and the subtle hoppiess that was apparent as well. I've never had Avery's Ellie Brown, but I will look for that next time I'm out.
Chris,
I wonder how much of a weight difference that would actually make.I'm assuming it would be significant. A trailer truck full of cases of bottled beer vs. a trailer full of canned beer. I wonder what the weight would be, but I would assume you could get more canned beer than bottled beer in there as well.
I am all for cans myself, 'make everything cheaper' is my motto.
Especially beer, so I can drink more of it.
Matt:
Went to the Peoria International Beer Fest: Had a great time; sampled the good stuff. Go to the link: http://batfan63.blogspot.com/2008/04/another-beer-festival.html and let me know what you think.
I haven't got any cans around to weight right now, but my 24pk of empty 12oz bottles weighs 12.6 pounds with the box. Let's say that's 0.5 pounds per bottle.
A pint of water weighs about 1 pound, so 12oz of beer is pretty close to 0.75 pounds (beer is slightly more dense than water, but that number is easier).
That means a full bottle of beer weighs 1.25 pounds and 40% of it is packaging.
If a can weighs 25% as much as a bottle (I bet its even lower), that would reduce the overall shipping weight by 30%! That's quite a bit!
Post a Comment