Deschutes Mirror Pond Pale Ale

Brewed by Deschutes Brewery
Style: American Pale Ale
Bend, Oregon USA

Bottle. Pours amber, with a moderate head. Aroma is moderately sweet, with pine and grapefruit hops. Taste is more towards a fresh citrus/grapefruit taste, with a moderate amount of grapefruity bitterness, a hint of pine, and a bit of a slightly sweet malt backbone. Decent, but doesn’t stand out.

12oz Bottle Best by: 5/21/08 Received in a recent trade with russpowell, thanks for the big ol’ boxes Russ! Mirror Pond Pale is a polished copper bordering on orange with a good deal of fine particulate suspended throughout. A finger and a half worth of cotton white head formed on the pour but quickly dropped to a skim coat with not much more of a ring. The head leaves some patchy lacing but nothing out of the ordinary. There’s a good deal of toasted grains right off the bat, I even get some dry but muted nuttiness. The hop additions bring about a decent amount of orange oils with a little grassiness and earthiness in the background. Very balanced pale ale, unfortunately I’d enjoy a little more hoppiness. The flavor rolls right along with the aroma. Toasted grains with a slight drizzling of caramel frame the orange oil hoppiness with grassiness here and there throughout. Mirror Pond is a very balanced pale ale, just not really my style. A good pale none the less. There’s good body on this beer. Medium bodied with a smooth somewhat creamy mouthfeel. The carbonation is soft and pleasant. Mirror Pond is easy to put down. Something you don’t really have to think about but that’s enjoyable to put away. Deschutes brews some quality beer. This isn’t one of my favorites from them but it is a solid pale ale. This is a very well balanced pale ale. 5/11/08

Cold 12oz bottle: Pours a cloudy medium orange color with a minimal amount of white bubbles around the edges of the glass. Aroma and taste are of floral hops and sweet malt with notes of caramel and citrus. Moderate carbonation. Moderately bittersweet ending with light sour notes.

From notes taken at the Southwest Beer Festival in Scottsdale, Arizona. The conditions were hard to take notes in but these are the ratings and they stand. Draft. Clear amber gold. Aroma is hoppy. Flavor is malty and decently hoppy. Not much bitterness. Light. Fizzy. Okay.

Deschutes’ Inversion IPA is high on my list of the most approachable pale ales. It doesn’t have all five shining stars of glory that my imaginative rating system permits as the maximum award, but it’s enough that I’d be happy to drink it again without fear that the hops would tear the first layer of skin from the roof of my mouth. It instilled in me a callow optimism that I had not felt since I first attempted to ride a bike. The ensuing collisions knocked that optimism (and a few critical organs) out of me, until now. Alas, I have come to another pale ale offering from Deschutes, and with eagerness I take a sip. With dread I swallow. It is another face in a sea of ashen gray faces. It is another drone in a cacophony of dull humming. It has but one remarkable feature. Detergent. I mentioned in my review of Deschutes’ Twilight Ale that it tasted a great deal like public sanitation vis-à-vis mildly fragrant soaps. This tastes like a hoppy version of that. I’m beginning to suspect that somebody is watching their very well lathered hands in the vat, leaving the beer bubbly and extra clean. Call me finicky, but I don’t want my beer the same way I want clean epidermis. Let’s look at Mirror Pond’s other qualities: within a bronze-honey colored hue a great column of bubbles wobbles to and fro like a swarm of bees. The head above is off white like day old snow, and leaves scattered but adhesive lacing. A strong punch of grapefruit greets the nose first, followed by white grapes and a bland bitterness that wrinkles the nostrils. The taste begins with strong push of grapefruit, then hits the soap stage, then abandons both to land effortlessly on a generic bread/yeast note. All the way through it is flat, watery and boring. Not to mention the, you know, soap lingering there. I think any beer that two-prongs the taste with detergent and grapefruit is lacking something in complexity. More than that, it’s lacking something appealing. No, I’ll be sticking to the Inversion IPA, thank you. Or was it that I just had a batch made before Mr. Bubble received gainful employment at Deschutes Brewery?

A rich bronze color with a honeycombed, white head. A nice citrusy, delicate aroma with some bubblegum and yeast fruit. Flavor is fruity and floral in its hops and combined with bubblegummy malt. This is very well-balanced between malt and hop though I do not care for the bubblegummy house character I get from Deschutes.

En vern’s bayside en orcas island de san valentin con la bea. Tambien los sicilia. la pasamos muy bien con todo el lugar que es impresionante. dead man’s rogue exquisita y esta es excelente tambien

Nothing special. A session amber, perhaps overpriced and overhyped. Thin an unobstrusive character.