Left Hand Deep Cover Brown Ale

Brewed by Left Hand Brewing Co.
Style: Brown Ale
Longmont, Colorado USA

My first brown ale experience, when I first started dabbling outside the usual boring, tasteless domestic beers was Newcastle Brown Ale. Since then, I am always on the look-out for a fine brown ale.
This brings me today to the delicious Deep Cover Brown Ale from Left Hand Brewing. I may be a righty, but in this case, I’ll take a lefty any day.
A small head, which I have found to be typical of brown ales. Deep brown with a tinge of amber where the light peeks through. Sweet milk chocolate and caramel malts in the nose, almost like caramelized pecans. Clean and smooth, with definite malt sweetness. Bubbles zip to the top as I take a quaff. Mild hops lemons on the side, but overall, it is the smooth, slightly crisp malts which bring Deep Cover Brown out of the shadows. Caramelized almonds, a hint of fruit (cherry), and sweet toffee carry my taste buds away to brown ale bliss. Overall, not too heavy a body. Just enough weight to remind me that she is a brown ale, and should be enjoyed as such. I’ve tasted heavier, fuller body brown ales so Deep Cover strikes a nice balance in the middle. Not as heavy as a Corsendonk Abbey Brown but not as weak as a Newcastle. My malty goodness is definitely up front, with the hops giving it a wee bit of lemony kick from the background, sneaking out more as Deep Cover warms and my glass grows empty.

not as strong in many areas as expected, taste, etc. goes down real easy, some caramel, fizziness, would drink again and again

Deep brown beer with a small, beige, quickly diminishing head; small, firm bubbles. Aroma is malty with barely a hint of caramel and raisin. Flavor is predominantly malty with slight nuttiness and virtually no bitterness at all; that’s it, nothing else. Medium body, slightly slick. Very plain and nondescript; hardly any complexity at all.

Bottle Red pour with nice head and decent lacing. Very malty aroma and flavor. Not too great overall, average.

OK, but not great. Pours a nice red color with an overly active, large bubble head. It’s a sweet, nutty flavor, but the body makes this beer a little too cola-like and thin in the finish.

Bottle. Amber brown pour with thin off white head. Aroma of caramel and nuts. Taste of malt and caramel. Pretty thin finish. Not terrible, but not great either.

Bottle. Pours with average fizzy light brown diminishing head. Lacing is fair. Clear body that is light to dark reddish brown. Aroma is average malt, toasty and nutty with a light hop note. Medium bodied with a thin and slightly creamy texture. Average carbonation with an astringent finish. Flavor is average in duration. Moderately sweet to heavily acidic and lightly bitter. Not much smell. Not a whole lot going on, with a weird finish. Not liking this one too much.

Like an aggravated mother to her kids, I don’t have much to say to Deep Cover. Left Hand, with the exception of their Milk Stout, has assaulted me with so many mediocre beers that I’ve become irritated. And Deep Cover was possibly the worst way to finish off the variety pack I had inherited, emphasizing the bland character of their beers and bringing a mark of shame to the otherwise vibrant Colorado microbrewery scene. As so my comments are terse, along with the forthcoming description, fitting because I don’t want to say much about it, and there isn’t much to say about it. It’s a smooth and simple malty drink, colored a deep red and with a vaporous white head. Beyond that there’s a simple touch of cranberry and raspberry, but that’s where the dynamism ends. It’s like drinking immature angst, sipping on that acrimonious apathy exuded by teenagers in their worst years between the insouciant innocence of childhood and the noble maturity of adulthood. One gets the impression that Deep Cover simply doesn’t care. Even worse, it has no apparent reason or motive to be so ho-hum! You see, even if someone fails to achieve their life’s dream, history will grant him some degree of fame and recognition for deeds conceived and unborn, so long as the motive or reason was revolutionary, just, or grand. The fallen general, or the murdered artist become martyrs for a cause they never saw an end to, honored and remembered for time immemorial. But when a job is left incomplete for no other reason than the willingness to accept a lower quality brew, the whole process becomes wretched. And when I drink Deep Cover and look at the bottle with a chastising glare, all I get back is a shrug and a smirk. To me that is the most offensive tone a beer can convey and the reason why it is so loathsome. From a perfectly practical perspective it’s just another average beer, but I’m sensing something deeper here, something from the brewer’s spirit as an artist, and it’s entirely inadequate for the craft. Thank goodness this isn’t present in all of Left Hand’s products, but I certainly hope they can rectify this one as it’s enough to put a would-be festive drinker in poor spirits.