Uncommon Brewers: Bacon Brown Ale (USA: Brown Ale:6.8% ABV)
Visual: Clear dark brown red. Inch of mounded browned bubbles that frothed up far too easily. The head leaves clumps as it goes down and the body has a medium amount of small bubble carbonation.
Nose: Wheaty. Pork scratching. Dry. Coriander. Chocolate dust.
Body: Moderate bitterness. Slight tart touches and grapes. Quite dry. Malt chocolate drinks. Smoked meat. Red cherries. Slightly salty.
Finish: Dry bitterness and malt drinks. Smoke and salt touches. Bitter chocolate. Occasional meat.
Conclusion: Is there actually bacon flavour in here? I’m of two minds. The first is that behind the chocolate malt drink body there is this salty pork scratching affair going on subtly. The hints come in touches of salt smoke and meat platters. Now the other part of me says bollocks to that, you’re imagining things, and lets face it the light cherries is more dominant than any imagined meat flavours, and the cherries are but a tiny element.
Either way it isn’t overtly bacon styled. It is however very much a brown ale, and at least that is something.
As a brown ale it isn’t bad, quite chocolate and malt drink styled. Hints of fresh tartness make it more drinkable, but mainly it is towards the more malt dominated end of the spectrum. Very smooth and easy to drink.
As you drink more it does become saltier and more pork scratching styled, more in feel than flavour. However by that point in the beer it could just be the booze talking.
So, quite pleasant, not up there with “Angry Boy Brown”, but it does have that (possible psychosomatic) meatiness that pops up occasionally to make it different. Possibly. I’d say if you want if for the bacon don’t bother. If you want a brown ale there are better but it does the job.
Doesn’t seem a particularly uncommon beer 90% of the time, but the other 10% kept me guessing.
Background: this brown ale is made with bacon and buckwheat. I had to look up what buckwheat was for this review, and I’m still none the wiser on what it may have added to the beer. Despite the upsurge in craft beer companies using cans I’m still a touch wary of them. Possibly I shouldn’t be, but it takes a while to get used to decent brewers using them. Not run into the Uncommon Brewers before, so had no real expectations going in.