New beer from Olands/Keiths

[vgoreham]

I recently stumbled upon an unmarked/unlabeled can of beer which was made at the Olands brewery.

Similar to the 'black beer' that Bud is coming out with, AB-InBev are looking to carve into part of the craft beer market (90% market share is not enough!).

In any case, I got to split a can of this stuff with a buddy of mine. I'm not sure how they're going to market it, but I'd call it American Pale (but on the far low end of bitterness).

It's really not terrible, you can actually taste the hops -there were actually a significant amount of late-addition (C?) hops. However, as I said, it seemed to be lacking some bitterness, so I found it to be a little sweet (and without enough malt flavour to support that level of sweetness). Unsurprisngly, I also found it too fizzy for my taste. I'm guessing it's standard 5% alcohol, but who knows. If they market it as a Keith's product, it'll be the first one that didn't taste distinctively 'Keith's'

I guess the summary is that it's a little uninspired, and none of us are likely going to drink it on a regular basis, but I could actually see it doing fairly well commercially. Then again, maybe it will just lead as a stepping stone away from the mass market stuff into real craft beer.

There's a chance this is a work in progress, and I kind of hope so. It wouldn't be the worst thing to have the big guys putting in some effort on making better beer. With some work it could definitely fall into a drinkable category (Sam Adam's territory, perhaps, as its ceiling). I'd certainly welcome a new 'there's no good beer at this bar beer'.

It'll be interesting to keep an eye on this, and it this thread gives us a place to do that.

Edit: I'm wondering which one of you smartasses will be the first one to make the obvious 'Amarillo IPA' joke.

[derek]

Of course it's a "work in progress". If the one you had showed some flavour, they're going to be a while working that out...

[mr x]

[jeffsmith]

[BobbyOK]

I'm guessing that's #217 referenced here: http://www.brewnosers.org/forums/viewto ... =10&t=3212" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

[LiverDance]

Rickards is puting out an oaked lager in mid november.

[CurtisD]

The Rickard's Oakhouse is already on the shelves in NB. Debated buying a 6-pack the other day, but I still have some Cardigan I haven't finished yet (that was a disappointing brew to me).

[PEIBeerGuy]

As someone from the Cardigan area, I take exception to all styles of cardigan used in the packaging - nobody here would be caught dead wearing one of those, let alone drink one... nobody respectable in Cardigan, anyway... well, that would leave some people willing, but still... you get what I mean. Back me up here, Jeff!

[jeffsmith]

I wholeheartedly endorse the above information.