Upstream Capitol Premium Pale Ale

Brewed by Upstream Brewing Company
Style: English Pale Ale
Omaha, Nebraska USA

(Draught) Pours an amber color with a small white head. Very mild hops aroma. Sweet with a light hops flavor. Creamy palate.

On tap at the brewpub. The body was dark amber with an off white head. The aroma was decent grapefruit with some almonds. The taste was bitter grapefruti with some walnuts. Not much balance here.

Reddish amber. Mellow overall. Nothing really to say about this one ... "vaguely" everything. Probably a ready-to-brew recipe.

UPDATE 7/22/7: I just tried this again for the first time in many years. This is simply not the same beer as it originally was. On cask at the brewpub. It is a beautiful serve with walls of lacing cascading down going from waves of light brown separating to a reddish amber color with a thick white head. Very nice aroma of fresh green piney hops. Served properly at cask temperature. Has a great tartness to the flavor like a homebrew pale ale. Great gypsum saltiness is present here as well. Has a tea-like astringency. Low carbonation, but still has a great tingle to the tongue. Medium body, a smooth and easy quaffer with a distinct flavor profile of a pale ale. Fantastically better than the crap that once went by this name.

From a growler I got a couple weeks ago--hopefully it isn’t all crappy, though I did see them CO2 the empty growler beforehand, which is a first in my book. Pours a clear copper orange with a half finger light beige yellow head. Aroma of some pine and toffee, also some biscuity malts, some very light pennies. Taste is much the same and a little more citrusy, though the flavors don’t meld--seems like an APA’s hops and an English bitter’s malts, which doesn’t work in this case. Medium bodied, light carbonation--which I’m sure was a little better when it was more fresh, so I’m not taking any points off for that. Decent at best.

On tap at the brewpub. Pours a slighlty hazy golden orange with a thin off-white head. On the nose is pale/caramel malt with a slightly fruity hop note. Light to medium-bodied and slick with a bitter and astringent finish. The flavor more-or-less follows the nose, but the ending is just bad, almost like green olive juice was mixed into this one. It starts out decently enough, but the finish is unforgivable; this one’s pretty rough. As odd as this stuff tastes, I wouldn’t be surprised if the line for this one is contaminated, but come on, this is their own place. That should never happen.

Fleeting hops aroma with some soapy and cereal notes. Copper in color with a little bitty head. Very little body. A bit musky on the finish. Not a very distinguishing APA.

Tap @ brewpub: Clear amber color with no head. Interesting flavor for a pale ale. It actually resembles an ESB more than a pale. Flavors of freshly polished shoe leather and something musty. There is a sharp bitterness in the flavor, almost like hair spray. At worst, it is a bad example of an American Pale ale or at best, not my preference for this category.