Great Divide Ridgeline Amber Ale (Arapahoe Amber)

Formerly brewed at Great Divide Brewing Company
Style: Amber Ale
Denver, Colorado USA

Bottle: Coppery amber, translucent, moderate off-white head, fairly nice lacing, light carbonation.   Malty/grainy aroma, biased towards the grainy side.   Malty start, hay/oat flavors, subtle astringency, semi-sweet and slightly nutty on the back side.   Nice body, mediocre mouthfeel.   Clean finish, a bit of a graininess lingers beyond the end.   Not bad, solid, but nothing extraordinary.

12-oz., courtesy the kind hospitality of BitBucket, jr. Pours clear medium amber with moussy thin dirty-white head. Caramel and a little brown bread on the nose. Caramel and biscuit and toast and nuts on the mid palate. The body, though, is light, and that combined with a fairly light carb make for a weakish attack. Very little finish. Despite the attack and the finish (or maybe because of them), this is an ultimately sessionable bee5r--the mid palate is so delicious that you could easily knock these back over and over.

Initially poured out crystal clear copper color until some sediment hit the glass. It is now a murky orange-copper color with nice off white head. Light malt and metallic aroma. Flavor is light and a bit watery. Taste is caramel and grainy malt.

MALTY! Chock full of caramel malt goodness with considerable sweetness and bitterness (body, not aftertaste) to make things interesting. Nice!! I just knew that the brewery that produced St. Brigid’s Porter could come up with another quality brew if they tried hard enough - and this is it.

Nice copper-amber color with a lofty, lasting and clingy head. Malty-sweet nose is alluring. Creamy & thickish, low-carb mouthfeel was kind to the tongue. Rather malty and flavorful brew. Roasted, sugar-coated nut notes throughout. Nice aromas of chocolate, caramel, nuts and zingy-sweet hops. Bread dough yeastiness, too. Finishes clean and slightly bitter with lingering caramel flavors that last well into the aftertaste.

Brown, thin tan head. Malty, bread aromaEarthy, floral hop bitterness, which is nice in an amber. Seems farily well balanced, and better than I was expecting.

I didn’t care for this. It makes the right choice in being "bigger" rather than "weaker", which is to be commended, especially in the "amber" style which gets a fair number of imposters. But along the way it made some other less fortunate decisions, in my mind. The appearance was excellent--rich red/amber with a wonderful billowing head that had my little kids impressed. Slightly metallic aroma and hints of caramel, but the tasting was a real turnoff--like toasted chestnuts and walnut shells with some sweet potato pancakes (make that "potatoe" using the Dan Quayle spelling, since there is a street called Arapaho near my house and thus I find the "Arapahoe" to be similarly odd). The palate is decent, smooth and rich, but the lingering edge didn’t suit. Good effort with this one, but in a pure "the taste is the test" way this was not my beer.

Light amberish brown color, with a small tan head. Flavor is mostly caramel, with some rich nuttiness, and just a hint of citrus hoppiness. Nicely balanced and easy to drink.