Tuesday, May 13, 2008

Southern Star Pine Belt Pale Ale

YES! Finally the time has arrived. Texas's newest brewery Southern Star out of Conroe has released it's first beer. If you've read this blog much you know we've followed them since day one, and I've been extremely excited to try their beers. Before I get into the tasting a bit more on the package. The beer is packaged in cans, but not just any cans mind you, but Big Boy cans (for a visual think of the big Young's Double Chocolate Stout can's). I really really love the packaging (even if the primary color is Aggie Maroon, not that I'm from UT or any Texas school for that matter). I like the alternative packaging, getting away from bottles helps keep away oxygen or anything else that could damage the goodness that is beer. Plus its great to take down the Guadeloupe River. OK enough on the packaging, how did it taste?
The Beer: Pouring the beer out of the can into a snifter glass it comes out an orangish amber with a frothy thick off-white colored head. The nose is hoppy, piney, and grapefruity with some toasted bready pale malty flavor. The taste is surprisingly refreshing, notes of hops, but not as strong as I would have thought from the nose. Very balanced, with understated yet extremely flavorful hops. Nice resin-y finish, full of citrus and piney notes living up to its name. Smooth, very nice, this one gets an A- from me. Great job on their first beer, can't wait to try more. The folks over at BA seem to like it too!

3 comments:

Lee said...

Tedo: I'm working on a feature article for The Austin Chronicle about Texas brewers. While it's easy for me to sample the commercially distributed microbrews and the Austin brewpubs, I don't really have the time or money to travel around the state sampling brewpubs in other cities. Thus, I would consider it a HUGE favor to me if you'd tell me which brewpubs in your area are doing really interesting stuff. There just might be an in-print mention of your blog in it for you. Please e-mail me at L M N (at) AUSTIN (DOT) RR (DOT) COM. Thanks.

The Dude said...

I picked some up at Specs last weekend. I'd generally agree with your A- assessment. Especially for something coming from CornRow, Texas.

8^)

BTW... I love cans too. I have a big collection of them from years gone by. I got a lot of them combing the dumps ~ an hour east of Pittsburgh with my dad back in the day. Needless to say, Iron City cans are part of my collection.

Lee said...

I finally got my hands on some Pine Belt as it slowly trickled into Austin stores. Day-um! First time at the plate, and they hit it out of the park. Well done, boys.