Wednesday, April 29, 2009

Cinder Cone Red - Another in the long line of Deschutes winners

I've tried pretty much every beer from Deschutes that is made available to us in Southern California in one way or another. Cinder Cone Red is the lone beer I never got around to trying. Being a seasonal beer it just arrived in So. Cal and I picked up a sixer at Beverage Warehouse when I was in Culver City yesterday. The guy there said they had just received this shipment today so it's pretty fresh.

I sit here drinking my first bottle while I watch the DVD I recorded of the 1-0 Manchester United victory over Arsenal today. For some reason I've always thought this was more like an Irish Red, but it isn't even close. It's definitely an American Amber/Red sorta beer, or like a darker pale ale without as much hop character. It's usually a style everyone finds boring but let me tell you this is a super drinkable beer. The light flavors of the caramel and slightly more kilned malts added to the base of this make the flavor surrounding the 5.4% ABV. The flavor is very clean and the finish is also one of the cleanest I've ever experienced. This thing has "session ale" written all over it. It's not a super exciting beer, but it's solid and although it may not be triple-hop-brewed (wait, yeah it probably is), it has that same sorta thing Bud Light has... drinkability.

5 comments:

J.Rhode said...

Does the bottle change color when it is cold enough to drink?

Rational Realist said...

LOL on J.Rhode's comment. This beer sounds good, at least its drinkable. I have found some red ales hard to drink.

Steve said...

Do not dismiss the bottle color change mechanism. How else are we suppose to know if something is cold?

As for Cinder Cone, it's your standard amber type ale (boring to most people, myself often included), but once we look past all our prejudice it's a really nice clean drinkable beer meant to be consumed in multiples.

J.Rhode said...

I think Twilight Ale is a solid beer as well.

Steve said...

That's another Deschutes beer I need to revisit. Had it a couple years ago... remember it quite well. That was the one beer, along with '07 Jubilation that I didn't care for too much.