Great Lakes Brewing Orange Peel Ale

Brewed by Great Lakes Brewing (Ontario)
Style: Fruit Beer
Etobicoke, Canada

Serve in Flute

650mL bottle from LCBO. Pours hazy yellow. Not much aroma to speak of, but a tiny bit of hops and orange in there. Taste is quite nice - malt and orange peel with a clean mildly bitter finish. Full bodied and full flavoured. A nice not-too-fruity fruit beer.

Rated based on price: this beer lacks basic adjuct flavorings that merit a price of more than $3 a pint ($6 a pint is obnoxious). Flavor: No hops, No orange, no flavor. The label is essentialy a lie. There isn’t a ’generous amount of hops...and heaps if fresh oranges’.... For an ale if this style it seems this is morenof a cash grab than anything else. On its own, absent the price and promises of orange flavor, it stands in its own as a nice ale. I suggest youvbuy Crazy Canuck for bang for your buck.

Pour a light amber beige head. Aroma orange rind/orange oil, caramel, cereal grain. Taste caramel, cereal grain, little hops and a decent orange flavor. MF medium body mild carb. An avg beer with orange flavoring.

Originally rated June 2007. Purchased a bottle of this 20th anniversary (brewery) limited edition beer while I was in Toronto. Pours a clean amber colour with an off-white fairly creamy head, that is not the biggest, but does retain its shape for a while. The carbonation is above average and lacing sticks all around the glass. The nose though is not very strong, with a bit of hop. This would be the weakest part of this brew. The texture is smooth and creamy. Its flavours are quite nice and not too punchy. Just a nice blend of grainy malts and hops. The bitterness is subtle all the way through, and slightly goes stronger in the aftertaste. The orange is not there to make this a fruity beer, but to built a bridge between the malts and hops. A very intresting limited product, worth seaking before it is gone.

Served in a Hill Farmstead wine glass. Pours a somewhat-light orange color. Starts with a single-finger head that quickly falls down into a bit of moldy-looking white color on the top of the brew with a faint touch of lacing. Nose is a very faint, slightly-tart odor consisting mostly of a bit of orange. Really faint. I’ve having a bit of trouble picking out anything else. The taste is slightly oxidized with a very mild amount of orange peel. Some very light bready malt and slight cardboard character. Body is quite light with a low amount of carbonation. There is a touch of sweetness there. The finish is like water, as there’s really not all that much there and the carbonation is quite low. Slightly-harsh in the end. Not too many off characteristics, but it doesn’t do all that much. Serving type: bottle Reviewed on: 11-20-2010

Bottle. Innisfil, Ontario, Canada. Excellent pour, good colour - looks just like a pale ale. Orange jumps up the nose and refuses to quit. Tons of malt, some bread. Strange taste - like someone poured OJ into Sierra Nevada. Not pleasing, really. I like my citrus flavour in wheat beer and that’s where it should stay. Very sharp, almost synthetic. Sweetens up on the way down. Does not get better as it warms. APA and orange juice - not something I’m looking forward to again.

Slightly hazy orange-gold colour. Not much head. Aromas orange (suprise!) and some bready malts. In the mouth it’s an odd, odd thing. Starts with some really sharp metallic/astringency with lots of bubbles. Once it starts to warm up in the mouth a bit it’s orange creamsicle through and through. Finish is a malty sweetness. Balancing the fruit and beer is always a challenge in something like this - I think this actually does a decent job of it. But the fruit just doesn’t really taste that good and the beer behind it is bland as can be. It’s a bad idea, reasonably well executed.

Bottle, pours light head and light colour, the beer smells a light bit like malt a little bit like oranges, this beer really was quite nice. The orange taste was well balance and made for a very dirnkable beer