Seabright Bass-Hole Brown

Brewed by Seabright Brewery
Style: Brown Ale
Santa Cruz, California USA

Draught. Dark brown body with a small head. Piny aroma. Flavor is some roasted malt bitterness along with some pine and bitter citric notes. Light in body with a dry finish. I would have preferred a stronger malt presence. Not bad.

Draught at the brewpub. Dark brown/black with a small but long-lasting off-white head. Aroma is fresh hops (mainly pine) and roast malt. Flavor is a nice mixture of pine hop flavor and roast malt and hop bitterness, fairly dry though with a small hint of caramel malt. Not quite an IBA, which I tend to think of as an extra-hoppy brown ale, but instead has an interesting combination of more-than-brown-ale but less-than-IBA hopping with a nice bitterness from the extra-roasted malt approaching some schwarzbier character. Oddly easy-drinking despite all that. A nice beer.

Draught at the brewpub. Dark brown with a lacy tan head. So I see that it’s a dry hopped when i look at the menu, and that is the first thing that I notice when I put it up to my nose: plenty of green, fresh hop aroma. Under that it a nice roasty dark chocolate. The flavor is dry and bitter, with nutty chocolate and plenty of hops in the finish. The hops don’t provide as much of a vivid flavor as the aroma, and add mostly a brisk bitterness, but this lends well with the bitterness of the roast. If this was more robust, I might agree on the India Brown ale characterization, but the lighter body and strength definitely make it easier to drink and more refreshing.