Review: The Magician Short’s Brewing

By scot in Beer on Tuesday, April 6th, 2010

With all the great happenings surrounding the Chicago area with the Craft Brewers Conference, I have had a hard time keeping up on my duties of tasting and reviewing American craft beer. Based on my ineptness over the past week, I will try and make up for it this week with a vengeance. 😉

The Magician by Short’s Brewing Company was the only new beer tasted last night (Pliny the Elder was tasted again). The Magician is an American Amber Ale that instead of being some hop whore it is a nice complex malty expression of goodness.

The beer pours with a huge, half glass, reddish-orange foam that has great retention as it becomes frothy while leaving almost no trace of its existence. The aroma follows and impresses: fruity, almost sweet fruit, with malt as the backbone. Grainy, toffee, roasted, and even coffee/chocolate notes develop. The deep dark hue of the beer as well as the aroma gives off the sense that the beer will have a big taste and body, but that is misleading. The beer is almost thin but most most of the aroma comes through in the taste, just in smaller doses. Nicely complex beer with just a little too much unbalanced sweetness for me.

The look and aroma are the highlight of this beer. Unfortunately it isn’t carried through to the mouth to making it an easy drinking beer. Still really good, just not great. Enjoy!