Surly Bitter Brewer

Brewed by Surly Brewing Company
Style: Premium Bitter/ESB
Brooklyn Center, Minnesota USA

Aroma is orange with some underlying malt, amber, pours a small custard head. Softer flavour of orange and malt than the nose suggested. Light bodied, well balanced. Very good example. Thanks Eric from Biergotter.

Can 50cl. @ chris_o’s Pre-GBBF Shindig 2008.
Clear medium amber color with a small, fizzy, fair lacing, mostly diminishing, off-white head. Aroma is moderate malty, moderate hoppy, grapefruit, citrus. Flavor is moderate sweet and light to moderate bitter with a average duration. Body is medium, texture is oily, carbonation is soft. (020808)

Not sure how to take this one. Thin body with hops in the forefront. But, the hops seemed...off somehow. Had this right after a can of Furious, so I am not sure how anything could have held up.

16 oz. can, gotta love that. Pours a healthy head over a bright orange beer, with a few active columns of bubbles. Nice apricot and grass hop smell. Foam settles to a rocky head as I write this. Certainly the hoppiest tasting ESB I’ve found in my relatively few tastes of this style. A more grassy taste of fresh hops in the front of the tongue, basic bitterness in the back. Yet the malt base seems to me a little lacking. Sure, that’s partly due to its lower alcohol, but it kind of turns watery and metallic. A few other raters noted this, I see, and put it down to being served too cold, and I did pull this from the fridge. I can’t bring myself to rate this too highly for now, but I have more I can try under different conditions.

Can… Post RBSG ’08 O-Town/Vero Beach Throwdown Chapter 8… Clear light golden ale with a small, frothy, white head. Spotty retention. Earthy, fruity aroma tenders interesting notes of honey, pepper and, of all things, Fruit Loops® cereal. Light to medium-bodied with lively carbonation. The flavor is a bit grainy and perfectly balanced. Crisp, lightly spicy, mostly clean finish. Thanks go out to SoLan for bringing the cans to share!

16 ounce can from kegbear. Pours a nice frothy white head. NIce orangish citrus aroma. The taste is very nicely balanced hop. So good. I would love to have this everyday.

Peach ice tea with a twist of lemon aroma. Fairly malty yet dry flavor. Tons of fruit aromas and dried, dry fruit flavors with lemon zest.

The sixteen ounce can comfortable pours into my large Tripel Karmeliet tulip glass with a frothy, initially two-finger thick pale tan colored head. The beer is a full amber hue that shows a lightly hazed, red tinged, dark copper color when held up to the light. The aroma is nice an punchy with hop notes of ruby-red grapefruit, vibrant orange zest and a substantial, toasty, biscuit like malt character. It is quite interesting how much this smells like orange marmalade, the hop character is just so nice and definitely hits the spot (and I haven’t even tasted this yet).

A little too cold still (near 40°F / 4.5°C), this tastes of lemons and hop bitterness. As it slowly warms the hop-citrus flavors become a bit fuller, with notes leaning a bit more towards grapefruit. This beer is quite dry, which is not unexpected considering the strength. A touch more malt sweetness might accent the hop fruit character a bit more, but I like how light and quaffable this is right now. There is just enough malt sweetness to this though to make the overall hop effect just fruity enough; touches of lychee, sweet grapefruit, ripe tangerine and some flowery peach notes all get more and more noticeable as this beer opens up. The malt is not quite as assertively aggressive as it was in the aroma, but still there are substantial flavors of biscuit-like malt, and pale toasted grain that add complexity to this brew.

This is just too easy to drink. The aroma is fantastic and I wish the flavor was a little more assertive, but this definitely needs to be on the warm side of 50°F / 10°C to be fully experienced properly. I would kill to have this on hand pulled cask for a pint or five in a row. This is a very good beer, that really would be at its best as a real ale; I would love to have that, but I know that is never going to happen. Way before I want it to happen, this beer has disappeared from my glass.