Samuel Smiths India Ale

Brewed by Samuel Smith
Style: Premium Bitter/ESB
Tadcaster, England

Bottle pours orange with a soapy white head. The nose is pretty subdued showing some toffee and grass. Flavor starts up front with some sweet caramel and quickly finishes on a bitter floral hop note. Kinda mediocre considering this is the land that invented IPA’s, but definately not offensive.

Bottle: This was a happy find in a local bottle shop.A good, clear orange in the glass. In the nose there are subdued citrus notes and some pleasant toffeed grains. In the mouth it is creamy of texture, displaying balanced piney hop notes and sweetness with a satisfying bite to finish. Very drinkable.

550ml bottle. Pours a hazy amber with a white head. The smell is sweet and malty with notes of grain and grass. The taste is bready caramel malts with floral and citrus hops. Crisp and medium bodied.

355 mL bottle. Pours a crystal clear amber color with a large creamy offwhite head. Good head retention and lacing. Sweet malty aroma with light toastiness and caramel. Taste is hop forward and lightly bitter with a hint of citrus as well as toasted caramel malts and a very faint nutty note. Medium bodied. Quite good and much to my liking.

A golden-orange beer with a 1 finger head. Aroma was sweet, mildly hoppy, & floral. The taste was the same as the aroma with a mild bitter ending & a weird kind of bad aftertaste. Obviously this is listed as an ESB but do the British make IPA’s as they were along time ago and the American versions not really IPA’s but are just more is better or vice versa.

550mL bottle. Definitely not an IPA in the mold most know IPAs. Pours clear amber with thin white head. Slight malt aroma, nice malt body, decent finish. Altogether unspectacular, but imminently drinkable.

Can’t think of another brewer that ticks so many of the boxes from a technical point of view and yet produces such uninteresting beers. Are we sure he wasn’t German? Samuel Schmidt? This is a well-made, efficient bitter that I began to forget before I finished the bottle. It looked great - tangerine-dun with a fat, soapy head that was well above average for a bottled beer. Grainy aroma, distinctively English in its lack of aggression - ripe apricots, biscuits and hazelnuts. This had one of the best mouthfeels for a bottled bitter that I have come across - soft with the light carbonation of a hand-pumped ale. But sip it and it’s all very blah. Hello taste? Malts dominate before a moderate slug of bitterness in the back palate but it’s too little, too late IMO. There’s nothing awful going on - it’s just dull. Like watching a German or Italian football team bore their way to another World Cup. (500ml bottle from Leura Cellars. BB Aug 2009)