Archive for the 'Joseph James' category
Joseph James “Tahoe Blue” Nevada Pale Ale
Beer of the Month Club is at it again! This month they sent a lot of beer to be excited about – all good genres and breweries that we’ve never seen before here at SevenPack central. Time permitting, I’ll hope to review all 4 of this month’s offerings over the next few days.
The first this month is a pale ale that isn’t into the whole brevity thing – the Joseph James Brewing Company “Tahoe Blue” Nevada Pale Ale. This ale is brewed out of, you guessed it, Nevada. It pours an exceptionally dark and stormy dark golden that is borderline brown, full of dense debris and stirring up a fairly dense cream-colored head. In the nose, there is a definite sweetness to this that has a yeasty tone to it. It is fairly pungent, shows a decent malt profile, but doesn’t actually demonstrate much hop bite at all, which is a bit odd for a pale ale that looks this ballsy. In the mouth, this beer is musty and malty. The mouthfeel here is thick, owing to the dense appearance of the beer. There is a fairly light malt flavor that coats the tongue and, surprisingly, a good blast of hop that hits around the middle of the tongue and doesn’t stop until well into the aftertaste. The hop isn’t extremely floral, but doesn’t stick to the more metallic english hop flavor, either. Rather, it seems to be a decent hybrid of the two – fresh, but with a musty bitterness that plays well with the big mouthfeel of this beer. Overall, it’s a decent pale ale. Frankly, it doesn’t look that pretty, and I think I liked it a bit more before I ever saw it. But, be that as it is, it’s pretty tasty – an ugly stepchild with a surprisingly good personality, if you will…
