Deschutes Cascade Ale

Clean grain aroma. Pretty light flavor. Hints of soapy hops on the finish. It’s alright.

Hmmm, doesn’t even really pass all that well for a light golden/blonde summer ale. Nothing of distinction about it. A thoroughly average experience.

great initial impression for a style that tends to have little character. golden color with depth and a slight haze suggests quality and complexity. well rounded aroma between the pale malt and sunny hops. goodness. there’s weight and balance throughout with notes of lemon, wheat/hay, and an underlying sweetness that compliments and never overpowers. Great.

Bottle. Dark golden colour with an off-white head. Aroma is citrus, hop, malt. Flavour is malt, sweet, hop, caramel. Pleasent easy drinkable beer.

Bottle. A clear, quite dark golden beer with a small off-white head. There’s some cooked vegetables in the aroma, a decent amount of malt, and lots of hops showing up after a few seconds, releasing pine, resin and peach. The flavor is malty-sweet, with some caramel and a good, but not overpowering, hoppyness and bitterness. Medium to full body. Quite short finish with malt and hops blending nicely. Really easy to drink, and quenching. (080509)

Bottle. Beers of the World Live, NEC. Golden with a small head. Aromas are light caramel with citrus and yeast. Some floral notes. Flavours are biscuit malts with dry citrus. A bit dull.

A reasonable pour produces a three-finger thick, light tan colored head in my 25cl tulip glass. The beer is a lightly hazed, copper color that shows a bright gold color when held up to the light. The aroma is quite hop focused with a mixture of grapefruit, herbal pine and sweet citrus zest. The aroma ends with a nice, crushed malt aroma of toasty grain, light biscuit and crushed saltine cracker notes. It somehow almost smells dough-like at times.

Bright hop flavors of grapefruit greet my taste buds at the first sip. There also appears to be some very faint plastic-like phenolics here, which I thought I sensed in the nose but then dismissed as I couldn’t actually imagine something like that being here. This phenolic note is very faint and I could be convinced it is something to do with the hop character; either way though it adds a bit of something off to the over all experience. Citrus notes are definitely the dominant flavor here though and there is a soft malt character to help support things along. Sweet, clean grain notes, a touch of cracker-like malt and a bread-like almost dough-like flavor towards the finish. The finish has a nice, lightly biting hop bitterness to it that actually starts to be noticeable towards the middle of each sip. This is quite light bodied and drinkable, though it is not any where near watery.

An interesting beer that would be quite a bit better if it did not have that slight off note to it. It is very quaffable and would be a great beer when I wanted something a little more characterful than a Pilsner, but with the same quaffability.

Purchased: <a href=http://www.ratebeer.com/Places/ShowPlace.asp?PlaceID=698>Plaza Liquors, Tucson AZ

courtesy of Laurent Mousson - clear bronze colour with almost no foam left; faint flowery nose; thin-bodied and quite watery; low bitterness, dusty and slightly fruity finish - a deception