SKA Special ESB Ale

Brewed By: SKA Brewing in Durango, Colorado

Purchased: Single CAN (12oz) from SKA mix pack bought at Binny's in IL; 2011

Style/ABV: Premium Bitter/ESB, 5.7%

 

It's time to wrap up my SKA Brewing mix pack. The pack contained 12 beers; 4 of their True Blonde Ale, 4 of their Special ESB Ale, and 4 of their Modus Hoperandi IPA. This has been a pretty solid mix pack. Sometimes I like more of a variety, and in that case I might lean towards a Sam Adams mix pack or something with more than three types of beer. But this mix pack is essentially three 4-packs, and gives you ample opportunity to weigh in on the three beers. The Blonde Ale was kind of a bummer, so let's see how their Extra Special Bitter ale is. 

SKA Special ESB Ale

If you check out SKA Brewing's "The Brew" section on their website, you can learn some cool stuff about their Special ESB Ale. According to SKA's website, this was the second canned microbrew in the United States after Dale's Pale Ale. This beer uses Galena Hops (medium, pleasant, and citrusy) and pale malts.

This beer looks pretty typical for the style. It pours with a nice amber body and a fluffy two-finger head. The color of the body is amber-caramel and looks slightly toasty. The body is totally transparent and has medium-low carbonation. The head is slightly off-white, leaning towards an eggshell color. The head is hanging around pretty good, but what has dissolved is leaving lacing. 

I smell caramel and malt on the nose, and maybe some grain. I also pick up on aluminum, a note I often detect in macro brewed pale lagers. The longer I bury my nose in this beer, the more I begin to pick up hints of a hop note: maybe sweet orange, melon, or peach. 

The taste is predominately malt-aluminum, but there is a hop note. The hop note is that sweet citrus note; peach or overripe orange. It's pleasant and not very bitter. There's a lot of caramel in here, but I swear I am tasting a slightly astringent flavor in here. 

The front end of this beer is carbonated and malty. Hops show up in the middle and a bit on the back. The back end is more refreshing than dry, but I am getting a slight metallic astringency. There is good carbonation supporting the body of this beer, but overall the beer is not remotely complex and is sort of thin. This has a light-medium mouthfeel that has okay depths, but it loses some depth thanks to its lack of complexity. The lacing on my glass is nice, the astringent note isn't. 

Rating: Average
Score: 53%

Maybe I'm crazy, maybe I have a defected batch. But all 4 cans of this have tasted about the same. That is: there is a good caramel and sweet hop note, but a strange astringent note. The astringent note isn't offensive enough to totally ruin the beer, but it is a problem.

 

As with the True Blonde Ale, I would not recommend you seek this out if you are looking for an ESB. This one does fall close enough to middle-of-the-road that it does work in favor of the SKA mix pack. As a standalone, meh.

I'll try this one again in the future, for science, just to make sure I'm not crazy. But the consistent astringent note across all four cans leads me to believe this beer just doesn't mesh with me. Your mileage may vary.