Beer Review: Carton Brewing’s This Town

Name: This Town
Brewing Company: Carton Brewing Company
Location: Atlantic Highlands, NJ
Style: Lager – Helles
ABV: 4.9%

The beer’s description on Carton’s Landing Page for the beer:

In a perfect world each town would have access to a fresh, straightforward lager beer. For our neighbors we built around a typically bready helles malt bill fermented with classic yeasts. Made unique by focusing on the defining bitterness and pleasant citric spice of Opal hops. Drink This Town because you’re almost home and deserve a beer from here.

It took a while before I repeated a brewery on one of my reviews, but I at least waited until the calendar flipped to a new year. I also figured if I was going to repeat breweries, it might as well be from (arguably) the best NJ brewery, Carton Brewing Company.

Carton Brewing is known for experimental brews, a series of IPAs (the 0-dub and Dubviant series of IPAs), and of course, Boat Beer. With This Town, Augie Carton and his cadre brewing wizards crafted something more straightforward with this Helles Lager. What is a Helles Lager, one might ask?

Essentially, a Helles Lager is the younger, jealous cousin to the Pilsner. A Helles Lager has a similar malt and hop profile as a Pilsner. This isn’t surprising since the Helles Lager was first brewed in Munich Germany as a reaction to the Czech/Bohemian Pilsner. The popularity of the Pilsner style (so named for the Plzeň (Pilsen) region of Bohemia in Czechoslovakia where it was first brewed) pushed brewers in Munich to come up with a comparable style so Germans would be more inclined to drink a beer from their own country and region. The designation of “Helles” means bright and once you look at the beer in the glass, the name makes sense.

For this beer, Carton went simple and elegant and it really, really paid off. The beer pours a bright inviting yellow and when poured correctly, with a fluffy white head. When most people think beer, an image of what comes out of a can of This Town is likely similar to what is in most people’s heads.

The aroma is pleasant and nearly as inviting as the look. A crisp refreshing taste of some breadiness, a nice bit of hops followed by a little bit of roasty malt/hops. This shouldn’t come as too much of a surprise, considering the beer style’s roots, but I was very, very much reminded of Rothaus Pils / Tannen Zäpfle from Badische Staatsbrauerei Rothaus, one of the best German Pilsners I ever had.

I think the best compliment I can pay this beer is that I’d want it in regular rotation in my refrigerator as an everyday beer. If Boat is Carton Brewing’s flagship year-round beer, then This Town would make an excellent #2 beer.

Highly Recommended, link to Untappd 4-bottle cap rating.