Brooklyn Ale

Brewed by Brooklyn Brewery
Style: English Pale Ale
Brooklyn, New York USA

Solid session beer. Had this under the moniker of "Pennant Ale". Nice lacey head, clean and crisp, smooth finish. Gimme more.

Pours a orangish brown with a decent head. Toffee aroma with English ale malt. Smooth flavor with buttery toffee rounded off with the slightest grassy hop. A nicely balanced beer with a good clean flavor. Brooklyn might be new to the Chicago area. I look forward to trying their other brews now.

I don’t know what all falls under this umbrella, but I’m reviewing the Pennant Ale.

Appearance: Slightly hazy, copper-tan color with a thin white head.

Aroma: Grass, highish-alpha hops, rain, brown sugar, white pepper.

Taste: Hoppy, slightly acidic, very mild chocolate note, sour apple, herbs.

Palate: Tart and snappy.

Overall: A great summer ale -- classic, no gimmicks, well-rounded. Avoid food that’s *too* spicy, but this is great with summer fare, as well as a good concoction of red beans & rice.

Serving type: bottle

Bottle 12oz. English style pale ale that smells of sweet malt and has a mild bitter hop finish. Head is very small and non lacing white. Nothing too impressive here but drinkable.

With its new label of Pennant ’55, I wasn’t sure what to expect and was thinking it would be a hoppier brew. Not the case. Felt somewhere in between a pale and a lager, with some malt present. Not quite malty/tea-like enough to seem like an English Pale to me. The worst I can say about this beer is that it’s really quite indistinct. But it was very easy to drink and it certainly didn’t taste bad. Good with food. Not big in the flavor department, but solid. Sounds like a back-handed compliment, huh? I’ll say this about it: they named it perfectly... can’t think of a better beer to have at a ball game with a hot dog.

Some light roasted malts, light bitterness, and a fairly creamy palate. Overall, not bad, but I think this is what Bass light would be like.

Bottle is labeled Brooklyn Pennant Ale ’55 which as a baseball fan I think is a pretty cool name. However I am a Red Sox fan and the beer, being brewed in New York is clearly referring to the Yankees 1955 pennant. I’ll try not to hold that against them :-) The beer is alright. Pours an amber body and after less than a minute is topped with almost no head. Halfway through I looked at it and it appeared more ruby colored. Caramel, malty aroma with a well defined malt flavor. Almost like a mild Scotch Ale. Subtle hops in the finish. Medium bodied. For whatever reason I was expecting something lighter. I guess the label had me thinking summertime, sitting in the sun, watching baseball, etc. This would be nice during the fall. Ok, so they won the pennant in the fall. I get it. Anyways as I said earlier it’s alright.

Golden color with nice thick white head. Nothing extraordinary about this other than its well balanced tending more towards the malts.