The Wild Times Pale Ale is no more…but I did get a tasting in before the 2.5 gallon keg was all gone!

• The Basics
  • Original gravity = 1.046, final gravity = 1.011, abv = 4.7%, estimated IBU = 45
• Aroma
  • Faintly floral hop aroma, with a very light caramel malt aroma.
• Appearance
  • Brilliantly clear and light yellow in color, with a low white head that is pretty persistant.
• Flavor
  • A lightly grainy and bready malt aspect; the hop flavor tends towards the distinctly (but not overly) bitter. The bitterness is fairly uncomplex, and the hop flavor has a slightly grassy aspect to it with a faint edge of citrus pith. It’s not bad, just not exceptional.
• Mouthfeel
  • A pretty dry and light-bodied beer.
• Overall
  • This is a pretty average pale ale. It’s not bad; it just doesn’t have much that pops out at me. It needs a bit more body and malt complexity; this probably would entail a bit of crystal malt and/or a second base malt (Munich or Vienna, perhaps) to round things out. I also ended up with a slightly lower gravity than expected after the boil, which doesn’t help matters much either. The aroma hop attributes have definitely diminished a bit over time. At their peak, they were surprisingly good, particularly as a novelty item. For an experimental beer, this was certainly a worthy attempt, but any future pale ales will need a different malt base.
• Score
  • 5/10