Sleeman Original Draught

Brewed by Sleeman Brewing & Malting Co. (Sapporo)
Style: Pale Lager
Guelph, Canada

Bottle 341ml.
Clear light to medium yellow color with a average, frothy, good lacing, mostly diminishing, white to off-white head. Aroma is moderate malty, toasted, light to moderate hoppy, citrus - syrup. Flavor is moderate sweet and light bitter with a average duration. Body is light, texture is watery, carbonation is soft. [20081231]

Bottle, 5%. Citric candy aroma. Clear yellow colour. Small white head. The flavour is slightly caramelly in the bonbon sort of way. Rough aftertaste.

Bottled. Yellowish golden colour, small white head. Aroma is grass, hay an some sweet maltyness. Flavour is sweet malts, mild fruits and some slight bittery notes in the finish.

Ah hell yeah, hook me up with the latest and greatest from the mightly Sleeman factory. In between batches of Bull Max, Canada’s finest "craft" brewers churn out some more industrial swill. Billed as having a cold, refreshing taste I thought perhaps they’d invented a self-cooling can and made a Rodenbach clone. And added a little CO2 tank to the side of the can and a tiny spigot on the top, because of course this is supposed to be draught beer. But alas, the can was plenty warm and not at all draught beer. Kind of hard to have a cold taste, well physiologically its impossible but you’d need a self-cooling can to at least have a shot at it. Refreshing, not so much. I drink a lot of water when it’s hot and this cannot match water, nor iced tea, nor the aforementioned Rodenbach. You see, sweet fizzy things aren’t refreshing, be they cola or macrobrew. It actually started off fairly clean, but as it warmed up a bit (robbing me of whatever opportunity I may have had to find that elusive taste called "cold") I noticed some vegetal notes. Bleh. I wish I could say more about the beer, but the beer didn’t tell me that much about itself. Maybe it’s shy, or maybe it’s just that shallow.

Clear golden with tiny white head. Sweet malty aroma with mild caramel notes. Sweet flavor with caramel malty notes. Ends sweet.

341 ml bottle. Pale golden colour. Sweet grainy aroma, some honeyish malt notes. A touch of mint with some light hop notes. Easy drinking, refreshing and with more character than many of Sleeman’s products, but this is still another beer that didn’t have to be made.

Bottle from LCBO. Golden lager with a thick collapsing white head. Light corny sulfuric aroma. In mouth, rather sweet fruity taste, not all that bad, just plain boring.

Mildly grainy, herbal aroma. Clear golden body is topped by a very low, fizzy, white, fully diminishing head. Mildly grainy herbal flavour is pretty boring but not offensive. Light, watery body with aggressive prickly carbonation. Quite gassy. Sampled at an office pizza and beer lunch.