Audacious in Thinking this Apricot Ale is Good
Written: Sep 04 '09
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Product Rating:
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Pros: Hard to find.
Cons: Working your way through the whole bottle.
The Bottom Line: This might just be one beer that needs a bit of an overhaul in order to be considered again.
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| Bounty628's Full Review: Pyramid Apricot Ale |
If you actually name your beer Audacious Apricot Ale you better be pretty darn sure that the product that you are releasing meets the highest of standards. And if you don't meet the highest of standards the likely response will be, "Can you believe the audacity of that brewery to actually think their beer is really that good?"
Pyramid Brewery is a smaller chain of breweries located predominantly in the Pacific Northwest and based out of Seattle, Washington. They have a rather impressive line of beers and seem to be a somewhat "Steady Eddie" brewery with offerings that tend to be pretty straightforward and sort of a solid B student brewery.
That said, detracting from their line is their Audacious Apricot Ale. It is interesting to note that this is not a onetime offering and appears to be amongst the regular offerings from the Pyramid Brewing line. For that reason it seems as though the beer is even less impressive because by now it should have been a much better crafted offering.
The pour is a rather orange hue that appears to be much more opaque than I was initially expecting. It is not as though there is a haziness to the beer, rather, it almost looks as though there is a certain thickness to the beer that I was not originally expecting. Not a lot of carbonation within the pour and there is less than a one finger rather bright white head that works its way to the top of the glass.
What is probably most distracting and unappealing with this offering is the smell. Rather than maintaining a pleasant apricot smell what this beer brings to the table is a nose that is simply too overpowering and one cannot help but imagine cracking open a jar of Gerber Apricot baby food within the nose. The smell immediately gives the impression that this beer is going more for the fake apricot offering than anything else. If there is supposed to be some wheat at work here with this beer it certainly cannot be picked up within the nose.
Unfortunately the fakeness that is observed within the nose also comes through the in the taste as well. Though you cannot say you did not know what you were getting yourself into when you selected an apricot ale, the down side to this offering is the taste that focuses more on quantity than quality. It is hard to really pick much out of the taste in terms of what the brewer brings to the beer since the overpowering and syrupy apricot taste simply cannot be worked around. There really needs to be more of an emphasis on the beer here as what is present in this offering is more of an alcoholic soda than anything worthwhile to speak of in terms of beer.
The mouthfeel also maintains that same unimpressive characteristic and the syrup sort of consistency that you could taste in the offering really coats the palate in a less than ideal way. One cannot help but think as the mouthfeel is noted that there is a certain microbrew quality that is lacking with the Audacious Apricot Ale and instead what it seems like is that this could be a rather paltry macro offering instead.
The Audacious Apricot Ale maintains an ABV of 5.1% and given all of the overwhelming apricot that is present both in the smell as well as the taste it is quite muted. Though it might have been in theory crafted to be a good session beer ideal for the summer time, I cannot think of one reason as to why I would ever go back to this beer again.
Having had the Haywire Wheat from Pyramid Brewing and having found that offering to be a much better beer, I guess the lesson learned here is that every brewery can have one or two offerings that are just simply off. The only problem with this is that there are not many redeeming qualities within the Audacious Apricot Ale that I would imagine anyone would find to be remarkably enjoyable. This might just be one beer that needs a bit of an overhaul in order to be considered again.
Recommended:
No
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