1.5 AROMA 2/10 APPEARANCE 3/5 TASTE 4/10 PALATE 2/5 OVERALL 4/20
Wow. Where do I start. Bottle 66 of 100, apparently a special bottling in champagne bottles for some kind of slow food festival (hence the Snail in the name - still doesn’t explain why they spelt it "Pail" though.) There was no price on the shelf of the bottlo, so I was expecting it to be expensive, but I was still shocked when it set me back $19! Before drinking it I convinced myself that I knew the beer was fresh, and Buckleys beer are usually pretty good when fresh, and they wouldn’t charge $19 for something that sucked would they? How wrong I was...
Very slightly hazy bronze colour, head retention is OK. The smell of this beer is the major problem - it’s really weird. There’s a herbal, cheap cola type thing there, with lots of sour fruits but I couldn’t get the thought of nappies out of my mind (not that I can recall actually smelling a nappy at any point.) Lacking malt flavour but has a huge dose of sour stone fruits. Some bitterness in the finish makes it taste a bit more like beer. It’s like they’ve tried to make a clone of Portland Pale, and a bad one at that. Disturbing as all of this is, the thing that really gets me is why they would spell it "Pail" - it just doesn’t make any sense...
1.7 AROMA 4/10 APPEARANCE 2/5 TASTE 4/10 PALATE 2/5 OVERALL 5/20
Weak citrus and peach aroma, soft damp, lifeless palate. Something wrong in the fermentation made this beer taste a bit tingly on the tongue. Disappointing.
1.8 AROMA 4/10 APPEARANCE 2/5 TASTE 4/10 PALATE 1/5 OVERALL 7/20
UPDATED: SEP 13, 2005 Bottled. Pale amber. Lingonberry aroma. Sweet, fruity, yeasty with extracty malt character and traces of wild yeast. Medium bitterness. As disappointing as my other attempts at Buckley’s beers.
1.9 AROMA 3/10 APPEARANCE 3/5 TASTE 4/10 PALATE 2/5 OVERALL 7/20
Fruity yeast aroma. Nice lacy head on a cloudy orange bronze body. Slight grapefruit flavour with an emphasis on the tang not the bitterness. And it seems to be bitterness which defines APA’s. On the other hand this is a rather watery brew lacking in depth of flavour. Not an absolute shocker but not hoppy or intense enough. This brewery should stop with the wanky names and put a bit more effort in the beer. It’s disappointing as this is the closest thing I have to a local micro.
|
