Name: Portland Pale Ale
Brewing Company: Lone Pine Brewing Company
Location: Portland, Maine
Style: Pale Ale – American
ABV: 5.2%
A clean, crisp, and flavorful American Pale Ale that should please almost all beer drinkers.
From Lone Pine Brewery’s beer page:
Our flagship pale ale carries a bright, clean body, with stone fruit and ripe citrus flavors from heavy late addition hopping.
When a new, out-of-state brewery begins distributing to your state, you want to give them a try. I’d been seeing beers from Lone Pine Brewing pop up on my untappd feed from in state friends, particularly Lone Pine’s double IPA Oh-J. However, I wanted something a little lighter and not quite as hop-aggressive. Of the Lone Pine beers available, Portland Pale Ale seemed to fit that bill.
The Pale Ale…not quite as popular as the IPA, but a defining style of American Craft Beer nonetheless. Noticeable hop presence, some malt body, maybe some sweetness from those two elements. What does Portland Pale Ale offer the beer drinker relative to those elements? Let’s take a look…or a drink.
The pop of the can hints at a nicely carbonatied beer, which turns out to be true when I poured the beer into the glass: a pale yellow, not quite clear, beer fills my glass. Topped with a thick white head, Portland Pale Ale is an eye-pleasing beer. A very nice and welcoming citrusy, hoppy aroma wafts from the can and glass.
A beer can look great, but does that positivity flow through to the taste? First sip brings a smile to my face. There’s a crispness to the beer I don’t typically associate with Pale Ales, more so with Pilsners. It isn’t unwelcome, or out of line with full profile of the beer, but a pleasant surprise.
After that first sip, a very nice hop flavor follows, accompanied by a balanced sweetness and a decent amount of body given the relatively low ABV. Lone Pine doesn’t list the hops in the beer, but I suspect there’s a blend of maybe Citra, Nugget, and Azacca? Or at least one of those? The hops give off a fruitiness that I can’t quite pinpoint to one specific fruit, maybe some citrus, or maybe some peach/apricot? That’s part of the fun of this beer is that the profile from the hops ring off some familiar notes, but maybe in a different key than I’ve had before or often.
Portland Pale Ale is quite simply a solid Pale Ale. You get hops, but they don’t bludgeon you. There’s enough sweetness to balance the inherit bitterness from hops, but it isn’t a cloying sweetness. The beer is very clean and balanced. In other words, a very well-made beer. This beer falls into the category of “pleasing to the more discerning/experienced beer, but not too aggressive for the macro-beer drinkers.”
Recommended, link to 4-bottle-cap Untappd check in.
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