Hook & Ladder’s Backdraft Brown

H&L brown ale

ok. i’ll come right out and say it… ehh… i don’t like this one. and i feel bad. because hook&ladder is one of our twitter pals.

i’ve now tried it two ways: slightly chilled and refrigerated. the worse one was slightly chilled. from the first sip it was wrong. the first punch was a tad skunky, if you will. overly sour. at the glass went on, it became a boring, watery lameness.

now, i know some are better more chilled. despite my feeling that the colder the beer the more muted the taste… i thought hey, maybe this one’s better more chilled.

nope.

a sip is like a mouthful of nickles. there’s a brown ale taste in there. somewhere. but it’s buried deep. the color is gorgeous, that’s for sure. i even like the aroma. but man. i don’t know if i got a bad six or what. but this was honestly not good. at all. like worse than miller lite bad…

i picked this up at adega, in silver spring. where hook & ladder happens to be brewed. so i expected great freshness. perhaps no one likes h&l there, and it sat on the shelf too long. who knows. alls i know is this was not a beer i’m going to be trying again any time soon.