Hop Nouveau 2010 – Trafalgar Ales and Meads

Oh boy.  Two people actually asked me why I was bothering to review this.  While my track record with Trafalgar hasn’t been horrible, and indeed, I’ve had a few brews I liked, I’ve also had some mediocre to bad brews as well.  You, dear reader, might not have realized the bad, because I’ve generally decided not to write about them.  Trafalgar is part of the OCB, and is “trying” to make a quality product, right?  Why tear them down?  But at some point, something’s gotta give.  Jordan St. John wrote a really well thought post on this very subject.  Not abusing or bashing Trafalgar, but simply calling into question some of their problems.  It got me to thinking, what if they really didn’t realize there was a problem?  What if they dismiss the frequent forum-posters (as many do) and just moved on.  They still get listed in the LCBO, afterall, they must be doing something right.  So I’ll give this a go, with an open mind and palate, and see what happens.  And just in case I do need to be honest rather than nice, I’ve included my dog, Barley, in the picture.  James Watt of BrewDog told me, you can say and do anything you want if you include a picture or video of a cute dog.

Hop Nouveau - Trafalgar Ales and Meads

Hop Nouveau - Trafalgar Ales and Meads

From a 650ml bomber with a best before date, the beer pours a hazy light yellow with a massive fluffy head.  Like, think dish-soap in a jacuzzi fluffy.  Aroma is big on the hops, quite a bit of pine and sharp lemon to the aroma, with some hints of something sweet, maybe even a little malty.  Strange, taste is not good.  Almost none of the hops in the nose are present, there’s hints of a bit of an earthy taste, but it’s not in a very good way.  Almost dirty tasting.  Surprisingly the finish is a bit of malt, with just a hint of drying hop presence.  As I’m reflecting and discussing it with a fellow beer geek, I realized that dirty taste is actually wet-cardboard, which for the uninitiated means this bottle is oxidized.  Not uncommon, and actually a bit frustrating, as I think if the beer was fully-flavoured and more well-rounded, it would not have been particularly noticeable (at least not to me).  As the beer is warming, I’m getting more of the lemon I smelled, but I’m also finding my tongue and mouth a bit slick feeling.  Which, when you consider that the beer is pretty thin on malt, is strange to say the least.

Okay, here’s my totally unprofessional mostly-untrained opinion:  This is a beer made with all malt-extract, no real grains.  You can research what this means, but basically it’s a very limiting factor on a lot of fronts, and certainly explains why the beer would feel so thin and have relatively little malt presence.  There seems to be little to no bittering hops (the ones you add early in the boil to give it bitter feel, rather then taste/smell), and a limited variety of aroma hops.  It could do with a lot less carbonation (it’s been open 40 minutes and is still more fizzy then soda).  For a beer that claims to be unfiltered, it’s really not that hazy, has effectively no yeast presence, and just doesn’t have the “pop” I would expect, though if it is a full-extract brew, that would explain a lot of that.  It’s not a “bad” beer, and certainly, does not have a lot of the flaws people often make accusations about.  I’m not going to pour it out, but I also won’t buy it again.  I’m not going to expressly say “don’t buy it”, but I will stress, buyer beware.

I guess I’ll add this to my list of mediocrity.

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