Left Hand Sawtooth Ale

Brewed By: Left Hand Brewing Co. in Longmont, Colorado  

Purchased: 12oz bottle taken from leftovers at a gathering, likely bought at someplace in Urbana, IL; 2012

Style/ABV: Premium Bitter/ESB, 5.3%

Reported IBUs: 27

I had me some beer this weekend, and I had me a hangover. The funny thing about that blissful window between drunken paradise and absolute hell is that it usually happens between 3am and 5am. At least the room wasn't spinning when I fell asleep. I should have a drink to my Vestibular system. 

The icing on the cake, however, was my poison of choice. I wasted away the night with Sierra Nevada's Narwhal Stout. I'm amazed that Stone's RIS tasted so yummy yesterday, and that I had a blast drinking it. But me and my liver (or aversion complex) need a break from stouts...so what better way to enjoy the night than with an English-style pale ale, brewed by Left Hand Brewing. First off, props to Left Hand Brewing's awesome website. I really like the Left Hand website, and think it is well-designed. The brewery was founded in 1993, and is based out of Longmont, Colorado.  

Left Hand's story began back in 1990 when co-founder, Dick Doore, received a small homebrewers kit as a gift from his brother. He became obsessed with homebrewing, and eventually wound up in Colorado in 1993, where he met with former college-friend, and fellow Left Hand co-founder, Eric Wallace. Together, they began to brew beer, and decided to start a brewery. In the September of 1993, the two Incorporated (INC.) as "Indian Peaks Brewing Company," and found a brewery location in a former meat packing plant next to the St. Vrain River in downtown Longmont. Due to some copyright issues with the name (Indian Peaks was being used by another brewery), the company changed their name to Left Hand, in honor of Chief Niwot, whose tribe was from the local area. The name Left Hand is from the southern Arapahoe word, "Niwot," which means "left hand." The brewery opened its doors for business on January 22, 1994. By 1998 the brewery merged with Tabernash Brewing from Denver, and started its own distribution business, Indian Peaks Distribution Company (during the next 10 years, Tabernash was phased out and the Distribution Company was sold). In 2012, Left Hand ranked in the Brewers Association's Top 50 Craft Brewers. The brewery has continued to expand, and continues to be very successful.

Tonight's beer is pretty simple, and you can get the breakdown if you check out Left Hand's Sawtooth Ale page. This beer is brewed with pale, munich, wheat, and some black malt (I'm not sure what the black malt adds). This beer also uses magnum, US-Goldings, Willamette, and Cascade hops. The Cascade hops are a bit more citrusy and spicy, so I'm interested to see how that goes down in this beer. This beer clocks in at 5.3% ABV, and packs 27 IBUs. A final note: this beer took home the bronze at the 2012 Great American Beer Festival, and won gold back in 1994. Let's glass this, and see how it holds up.

 Left Hand Sawtooth Ale

I'm a little surprised, the beer pours a relatively dark amber color. It's not quite copper, and has a sort of caramel color. I was able to work up 2-fingers of head on the pour, and the head has a slight copper/off-white color to it. In bright light, the beer takes on a copper/amber/orange color; the beer is transparent; and there is quite a bit of carbonation. There's some head sticking around, which is really nice, and some lacing pulling on my glass. Basically, it looks like a pale ale!

The aroma on this is fairly mild, but I'm getting some nice caramel sweetness and biscuit coming off the beer a few inches away as I browse the Interwebz. I'm also getting some light floral hops, hints of spice, and some grass on the nose.

The taste on this is light, with a nice caramel sweetness and some biscuit goodness. You get some grass, honey, floral bitterness, light spice, and hints of faded fruit. It has that slight bitter edge, otherwise it could easily be an amber ale.

This is pretty simple in terms of beer. This is smooth, refreshing, and a light-full to medium-light bodied beer. Palate depth is good, if you want to get refreshed, but complexity is moderate to low. It's not bad for the style, with nice biscuit goodness and some honey and grass in the mix. Up front you get biscuit, grass, caramel; this rolls into biscuit, sweetness, some hop bitterness; the back end is bitterness, grass, and then terminating sweetness. The finish isn't all that dry, which is nice. Super drinkable at 5.3% ABV.

Rating: Average 

This is a solid session beer. For around 8 or 9 bucks a sixer, I would be okay with making this a session beer for a Friday night, or whenver. Thus, I'm feeling a Strong Average on this. There's a nice biscuit character going on, and some nice subtle hops balancing throughout. This is on the sweeter side, and leans towards dem biscuits. Which isn't a bad thing.

Random Thought: Left Hand...hmm, we are halfway to a stranger I think.