Organic Dread Brown Ale

Nearly porter-deep this beer from Santa Cruz Mountain Brewing is a hearty brown ale.  My first thirsty quaff objected a bit to this one, a bit harsh and unrefined, but I’m quickly warming to this get-well gift from some colleagues.  Fairly bitter, with deeply roasted roasted malt, I’m not finding it to meld quite right, possible due to lack of body.  For a beer this deep, the frontend is awfully wet.  On initial examination, my first observation was the large bubbles of carbonation clinging to my pint glass and that there was a notable lack of head.  I believe that a beer this deep and dark needs a nice frothy head.

Now, don’t get me wrong, this is not a bad beer by any stretch.  In fact it’s nearly a very good beer.  A bit of fine tuning, perhaps accounted for even by batch variation, could make this a wonderful though challenging beer.  Slightly less caustic hops and a better carbonation process could keep me coming back to this again and again.  And I will certainly drink another Organic Dread Brown Ale given the chance.