Siren: Mesmerist Pale (England: American Pale Ale: 3.4% ABV)
Visual: Cloudy dark lemon juice coloured body with a dash of a thin white head.
Nose: Very fruity peach to peach melba. Slight cream.
Body: Light bitterness and hop character. Palma violets. Slightly dry apricot. Tart grapefruit.
Finish: Apricot. Growing bitterness. Lemon on pancakes. Lightly tart grapefruit.
Conclusion: This is not as booming fruity drink as you would expect from the aroma. The aroma is just massive booming peach. Thus from that I was expecting this to be a pale ale take on the mixed blessings you get with the NEIPA style. I mean look at it, on the eye it is so darn cloudy that it just shouts hazy pale to NEIPA.
Thus when I sipped the body it was interesting that it instead came across drier and more bitter than that aroma suggested, more in line with a more traditional American pale ale. Not super bitter, just a nice crisp bite under things.
Similarly despite a slightly dry touch at times, in general it has that wet, not too thick feel you get with a lot of the lower abv beers – though thankfully without becoming watery, and with that mentioned just slightly drier and more bitter touch underlying everything.
The fruit is definitely still there, more a dry apricot than the fresh peach of the aroma and backed by a mildly tart grapefruit that freshens everything up a bit, while a crushed palma violets mild character on the other side helps ground everything. Nothing too big here, but generally nice and sessionable.
Not a must have, but fits nicely into a more gentle evening drinking session.
Background: While I was doing notes in Japan I realised back home I nearly never do notes out in the pubs any more. Lots of reasons for this, but I decided, you know what, lets do some. So I was over in Bristol enjoy myself and decided to drop by The Three Tun’s pub – I had never been there before but had heard good things about it from friends. Unfortunately a google online lied completely about its opening hours, so I did a bit more wandering then came back to grab a drink and do some notes. These notes. Some of their cask lines were awaiting repair, but they still had a good selection in general – I have not done notes on Siren beers for a while so grabbed a pint of this to try. A nice slightly lower abv as well for something to enjoy in a gentle afternoon.
