beer deco

As summer inexorably slides in, most people would look forward to their light and tingly beers.  I still want my dark, heavy, slug-in-the-mouth beers, dammit.  Well, maybe a brown ale is a good compromise.  Some of them do have a certain weight to them.  Also, La Maldita's Originale has a label after my own heart.

While it's more cartoony than a Mucha, I'd say the influence is there.  Also, there is a recommended pouring angle, along with the temperature suggestion and admonishment against horizontal storage.

While bubbly, there's not a lot of head building up.  Must have gotten the angle wrong.  It has a mildly citrus scent, although sweeter than IPAs.  Maybe a little brown sugar?  The color is pretty good, orangey brown, a warm and inviting shade.  There's something Belgian in the flavor, slightly sweet but deep-bottomed.  I'm glad not to encounter the sour sting that so many Belgian beers have, though.  There's also some graininess, something akin to German light beers.  Despite the initial sweetness, I can also detect some earthiness in there too, not nearly as much as a black beer might have, but present.  It's a little bit sticky, hanging around at the back of the throat, but not a lot of strange aftertaste.  It's more of a touch than a taste sensation in that area.

Supplier: Cerevisia
Price: €2.70

louder than the ocean

On the twelfth day of Beermas I picked out for me
A drum of sea-going IPA
A musical magic elf
A lone surfer leaping
A fruit-filled dressed-up lady
Alcoholic café con leche
Hopefully unendangered feathers
A laid out insomniac
One secret promise
A possibly chatty barnyard animal
A random French reference
A bird that's not a pigeon
And a flamingo with mangoes and beets

So we come to the end of another Beermas, and I got suckered into another light beer.  Another IPA though, so not that bad.  It was the barrel on the waves that caught my eye, we can think of it as an old-fashioned drum of ... stuff.  I don't actually know if they used to say drums of beer for shipping.  Probably not.  But give me a break, I did find twelve beers to throw at you!  La Maldita's Piripa is an American IPA, to be precise, but that label gives it the sort of classic feel of the more traditional ones.  You can imagine that barrel escaping from a ship bound for some hot country, hops stewing within it for months.

A lot like yesterday, dark gold and sort of coppery in color.  Less abundant head, though.  Very aromatic, and typical of IPAs; lots of orange, bright and sweet scented, tiny bit of sour underneath.  Also like yesterday, much more bitter in taste than in smell, but this one does have some balancing citrusy sweet in there.  Very light feeling, nothing sticky, very clean tasting.  It's mostly a big, bold bitter, filling the mouth and disappearing in a ball of flavor down the throat, like a time-lapse sunset.  And with that, the curtain falls on Beermas!

Supplier: Cerevisia
Price:€3