MacTarnahans Oregon Honey Beer

Brewed by Portland Brewing Company (Pyramid)
Style: Golden Ale/Blond Ale
Portland, Oregon USA

12.oz bottle. Pours with little head that fades quickly. Color is straw. Smell is mild with little fruity. Taste is pretty blank but the aftertaste is pleasant for me. Comes back wheaty. Nothing special but drinkable.

Please, if you’re going to drink this....drink it on tap! Avoid the bottle at all costs, the bottle pales in comparison. Very tasty though, you can taste the hints of honey.

Straw color with a glistening, diminishing, fizzy white head. Grainy malt and light honey aromas. Touches of corn silk and more grain on the side. Light dry flavors of husky malt and floury grains. Little honey dryness. Quite fizzy in feel. Not enough malt to back up any honey in this brew. Weak and insipid.

12oz bottle: pours golden brown with quick fading white head, aroma is very light but of malt, flavor has very little honey to speak of and very light on malt also, and very little hopping. pretty bland beer.

Pours a straw yellow with a quickly disappearing white head. Not much aroma-malts, honey. Pilsnery taste-yeast-like a bit bitter with a very sweet honey ending.

Pours into my 25cl tulip glass with a two-finger thick, pale, off-white colored head. The beer is a clear copper color, that shows a bright gold color when held up to the light. The aroma is definitely influenced by honey, with it being the most prominent note. There is also a touch of grassy grain aromatics, notes of crushed saltine crackers as well as a thin beery note. Fairly simplistic aroma, that is not as interesting as it could be.

A honey sweetness is noticeable at the front of a sip, but the beer dries out somewhat without losing the floral honey flavors entirely. Perhaps a kiss of hops add a faint bitterness, as a balancing note the fizzy carbonation seems to add some sharpness to temper the honey flavors. Grassy / grainy malt character is noticeable, but doesn’t do a whole lot for the complexity of this brew. Thinnish and light in the mouthfeel, if the flavors were better this would be quite quaffable.

Not a bad beer, it doesn’t have any real flaws, it just isn’t all that interesting.

Bottle. Pours a clear golden with a small white head. Aroma of pale malt and honey. Taste is the same as aroma. Medium mouthfeel with a mild amount of bitterness. Not bad.

Well, it’s crisp, I’ll say that for it. It’s also as uncomplicated as a Robert B. Paker novel. The honey is more understated than I’d expected, playing off against a very light vanilla base on a well carbonated brew. A good choice to cool off with, but nothing to go looking for, that’s for damned sure. A classic lawn mower beer.