Angel City Ale

Brewed by Angel City Brewing Company
Style: Amber Ale
Torrance, California USA

12oz bottle-An aroma of malt and caramel on an amber body with a head that dissipates quickly. The flavor is sour with a malt finish.

Bottle: Pellucid amber, light head and lacing. Nose of light malt, caramel and some vague lack of character, like a black hole or a shadow. The flavor is lightly tart, metallic and noticeable bleak in the body. The finish is watery. Eh, better than some of their other beers in that it’s not horribly infected. Drinkable is a virtue I recon.

Malty nutty caramel aromam with just the slightest tinge of hoppiness. Sweet honey and toasted malts, creamy and mellow with a nice clean mouthfeel. Decent and easy to drink.

Bottle: Reddish caramel, thick haze, thin fizzy off-white head, spotty lacing.   Soft malty nose, seems as if it also might be a tad sour or tart.   Pale fruit skin is slightly noticeable.   Subtle sour maltiness at start, not hop oriented at all.   Minor sweetness, but just as much tartness, almost lactic like sourness.   Body and mouthfeel are moderate.   Slight graininess at the finish.   Fairly clean, lighter example of the style with an interesting pale fruit skin and sour touch.   Thanks Jordan!

This is my first experience with--rather amazingly--L.A.’s only local micro. Yes, this is definitely a malt-oriented Amber as opposed to a hoppy west-coast APA, and it’s a very good example. Its first impression out of the bottle is superb, with a very inviting aroma which is clean and malty sweet, above a harmonious noble-hop background--a reminder that there is a lot more to the world of beer aromas than floral American hops and spicy Belgian alcohols. (Not that there is anything wrong with either.) While extremely drinkable, I find the flavor and body of Angel City Ale to be a little on the thin side, albeit very clean and well balanced; this is almost a great beer. While not a beer anyone would twitch over, I can easily see myself building a classic pub session around this one, especially if served on draft as this beer clearly begs. It would also be an ideal starter craft beer for anyone seeking to move beyond fizzy, tasteless macros. A notch below its rough San Francisco analog, the venerable Anchor Steam, this is still a beer that we here in Los Angeles can be proud to call our own.

This IPA looked very promising but turned out to be a dud. The aroma was a old smell of caramel malt and similar to a very old and aged barleywine. Flavor is terrible and old with a very stale presence of malt and expired hops. I can’t imagine this ale tasting good at any point in time. I wish they had a date on their bottle so i could confirm that this is just a old bottle or thats just how this intentionally was supposed to taste.

(22 oz bottle: $2.99 at BevMo in La Jolla, CA) This exemplifies the type of amber I really don’t like. Sugary sweet, caramely, and very floral. The caramely malt is mostly just sweet, lacking any real quality or depth. Mild bitterness from the hops, but the floral character is bordering on unpleasant for my tastes. However, the aftertaste is indeed unpleasant to me, especially after drinking several ounces; that floral hoppiness just camps out on my tongue, blah! The nose is also sweet and floral, but both characteristics show less fortitude. Instead, the semi-dry caramel maltiness is able to assert itself and balance the nose out some. Body is light-medium, edging toward medium, but still seems a bit thin for an amber. Standard amber colored body shows near-perfect clarity. The off-white head rises to about a quarter inch before fading rapidly to a thin sheen. No lacing. So far, my least favorite of the Angel City brews, and that includes the infected Dunkel I had a few days ago. I simply don’t enjoy the sugary caramel maltiness or the choice of super-floral hops. I’m sure this amber will appeal to many, but I’m sorry, I just hate it.

Bottle. This one poured a really nice amber color. Nice foamy head that lasted not too long. Aroma is very malty, sweet smelling. Nice malty flavor as well, slightly sweet, with a bit of hops coming in at the finish. Could easily drink quite a few of these.