Arcadia Lake Superior ESB

Brewed by Arcadia Brewing Company
Style: Premium Bitter/ESB
Battle Creek, Michigan USA

Pretty orange/red color with a small, white, bubbly head. Aroma is sweet, bready, malty, with caramel. Flavor somewhat nondescript, but pleasant enough with a lot of sweet maltiness, and some mild but bitter hops in the finish. Thick enough but quite sticky. Not outstanding, but solid enough and easy to drink.

When I popped the topped it immediately overflowed. This beer has one of two problems: too much priming or as any homebrewer will know it has been contaminated from lack of cleanliness. Beer is about the color of Newcastle but hazy with large chuncks floating in it. As much carbonation as there was initially the head didn’t last at all. Aromoa is bland and coppery. Beer tastes quite sour and points back to a contaminated beer. With all the other decent ratings I am hoping I have gotten a bad sixer. This crap was TERRIBLE. I will only try this again if it is free and then I wil re-rate!

Cloudy peach-light copper color with golden hazy edges, firm finger high head of off-whiteness, good lacing in sheets and fine spotting. Aroma is of highly sour dough sweetness, nearly lambic-like with some barnyard funk which calms down after it warms a bit where it becomes more soft and toasty but that sourness of old white grapes and pale and stale orange skins keeps its presence felt. Way off in the nose. Taste is unique and pehaps not quite fitting what I would think of an ESB. Soft grains, bread crusts, floral hops, toasty middle lingering partially into the finish where it drys out with some smokey malts and corn flakes. A bit of the souring quality from the smell leaks through in certain areas which kept this from being any better on my palate. Feel is just shy of a medium body, overly sweetening with that grasp of sourness that just wasn’t doing it for me. Texture was a bit weird to match flavors with as it was lambic/saison-like. Not nearly an ESB as it seemed like some blended version of a saison and a bitter.

The most memorable aspect of this was my (non-beer drinking) brother bringing this to me without my asking for it. Nice, or not bad.Seem to feel much like an amalgamation of opinions on this - find the caramel malt, but while it is pleasant, it also seems lacking. Not bad, but it does have a sharpness in the bittering that I don’t completely enjoy.

Amber with frothy white head. Hoppy/citrus hints in the aroma but nothing distinctive. Satisfying body but not impressive. Flavor was decent. Some hoppiness/citrus. Refreshing. Somewhat English. Nothing special.

Poured dark amber with little head. Very smooth and drinkable, and moderately bitter.

Little head on top of a beautiful copper colored brew. Smells of malts and bananas. This is a typical ESB taste with peaches and malts. One of the best US made bitters I have had.

Pours a cloudy brown. There are thing floating in mine. Flavor is very hoppy, almost an IPA. Ok beer but if I wanted a good ESB I would stick with Schlafly winter ESB.