White Birch Brewing Belgian Style Pale Ale (365 Day 349)

By scot in 365 Days of American Craft Beer, Beer on Tuesday, November 15th, 2011

White Birch Belgian Style Pale Ale

I never like to talk about an American craft beer in a negative sense. If you have followed my roller coaster ride of American craft beer over the past year I have always stated this fact as I know how much effort goes into brewing each and every beer. Along comes beer number 349 from White Birch Brewing.

Eighteen months or so ago, I was on a hunting down beers from White Birch. I had heard really good things about the brewery with each of their beers receiving high marks on the usual web beer grading sites.

Belgian Style Pale Ale was one of the bottles that I landed during those hunting days. To my dismay the aroma was average at best (thus the 6) while the pour was one of the lightest beers that I have ever poured (6 might have been gracious). The flavor began the disappointment. There wasn’t much there, what was there wasn’t balanced, and very difficult to even explain. Maybe this beer shouldn’t have been cellared as I noticed on one of those beer ratings sites that people that tried “old” bottles rated much worse than new.

I still have a few more bottles of White Birch in the basement that I will be trying over the next few months. I am hoping that they are similar to my experience with Tripel. Enjoy!

Aroma: 6 (25%), Taste: 2 (25%), Look: 6 (15%), Drinkability: 3 (35%), Overall: 4.0

Useless Fact: The Second Marquess of Ripon, a well-known British sportsman, killed a total of 556,000 game birds in his life. The Marquess dropped dead on a grouse hunt in 1923, after having bagged 52 birds that morning.