Silver City Big Daddys E.S.B.

22oz Bomber - 99 Bottles - Federal Way, WA
Aroma – Malty EBS beer with good use of hops.
Appearance – Amber in color, Light head and clear.
Flavor – Great ESB flavor with a deep hops and malt balance.
Palate – Great Mouthfeel, Nice texture with a good dry finish.
Overall – A very nice EBS beer. Had the flavor and balance with the strong hops this was a beer for the night.

Tap @ Brewery: Copper, light head and lacing. Nose of nice simcoe and amarillo, pine and grapefruit. Subtle bittering, dry hopped ESB? Delicious blasphemy, sweet body, chewy, quaff-and-drinkable.

Draft at the brewpub. Crystal clear light golden brown; thin gray rim. Big butter and caramel nose. Medium body, slightly fizzy. Butter, cream, caramel mid-palate. Herbal hop to balance. Cleanish biscuity finish. Kinda surprised to find such a butter bomb at SC, but they do seem to have high local demand for their beers, and maybe they’re rushing things through.

This ESB pours a medium brown amber color from a 22oz bottle. Medium sized white foamy head. Aroma is caramel, fruity with a touch of piney hops. A medium bodied ESB/Bitter. The malts are fruity and caramel. The hops are piney and earthy. Decent balance. Nice carbonation. This beer has the caramel and malts of an ESB and the hops of a PNW Pale Ale. Kind of a strange combination, but it seems to work. Its light enough to be a session ale, but has enough of a flavor profile to keep it interesting. Mouthfeel is full and round. Finish is clean and crisp. Aftertaste is slightly bitter.

Bomber.

Wow, what a disappointment. The aroma is piney cascade hops and maybe a hint of the crystal malt; the flavor is a thin metallic bitterness that could be the paradigmatic example of "the worst of cascade hops". The malts do absolutely nothing to fill out the flavor profile, leaving this thing far short of an ESB in my view. Instead, we get a "chewing on a nickel" finish on the tail of a boring APA-like pine hop profile.

Did I mention that I don’t like this one?