Thursday, August 24, 2006

Real Ale Brewhouse Brown

In my quest to taste more Texas Beers than I have in the past I picked a six pack of this Brewhouse brown from Real Ale. Packed in a unique six pack...a simple cardboard container only enclosing the tops of the neck's leaving the lower part of the bottles expose.
The Brewery: Real Ale is located in Blanco Texas, outside of Austin. It has been in business for 10 years, in fact they celebrated their anniversary on June 24th. Like most small breweries they are dedicated to the local community helping as much as they can with community service projects. To brew their beer they use a 15 barrel stainless steel brewing system to create their handcrafted beers. This is the epitome of a small brewery, but they make 4 regular beers, and 2 seaonals, a Barley wine and a Shade Grown coffee Porter that I would love to try.
The Beer: The beer is a light 5.4% and pours a deep rich brown, with streaks of red in the glass. A nice quarter inch tan head settles in, staying a while before finally dissipating to a constantly thin head and plenty of lacing. This is a very malty beer, with hints of chocolate, caramel and roasted malts in the nose. The mouthfeel is very nice, dry, slightly sweet, with the same caramel, roasted, and chocolate malts. This beer is made with four different types of malts, I can get 3 down, not sure what the other is though. My only complaint is the total lack of hoppy bitterness, which reminds me more of a English Brown ale not an American one. Not asking for a lot, just a bit and this would be a great beer. As it is, its a very smooth brew that I thoroughly enjoyed and would pick up again. Here's what the folks over at BA say.
Food for thought: I had this with grilled turkey and hatch chili pepper burgers and it went incredibly well. The sweetness of the malt helped over ride the spiciness of the burger and roasted and caramel malts fit in with the char of the grilled burgers. A very nice match.

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