December 8th - Harpoon Brewery Flannel Friday

Happy Friday!  We've made it though a full week of reviews as of last night and it's time to keep chugging along!

It wasn't that long of a week...but that's impressive!

Since it's Friday, it seemed appropriate to grab the Flannel Friday bottle sitting in my fridge from Harpoon Brewery.  This is one of those situations where I bought a beer either for it's name or the label art.  The former is true in this case.  I figured it would be fun to have on a Friday and throw some flannel in the background of the stock photos I end up taking to showcase each selection.  I didn't wear any flannel today. 

Here's your flannel

Trust me, if I was going off of any sort of former experience with this brewing company, I should have passed this by quickly.  There have been some questionable experiences with Harpoon for me.  Last year, I was super excited to try their UFO Winter Blonde which was dubbed a "vanilla cold brew ale." 

Not cold brew coffee like I expected, nor much vanilla

Also, back in 2014 I reviewed their Gingerland UFO.  Another flop.  Expecting gingerbread cookie and molasses from that, it didn't play out as I thought.  Maybe the 3rd time is the charm?

Using my generic pint glass that was a Christmas gift last year, the pour was a slightly hazy, caramel light brown with a creamy tan head at the top.  The aroma was very malty sweet, as described along with some pine hop notes.  The label talked about a citrus hop aroma, but I only got that slightly, and only because the label told me so.  As expected, the flavor was that of sweet caramel malts and a quickly fading bitterness.  There was a quick tinge of bitter pine at the beginning of the sip, but almost left completely from my palate and was replaced with a malty thick sweetness to round things out. 

A bunch of my friends who I follow on Untappd rated this higher than I am tonight.  It was definitely better than the previous two that came from Harpoon, but, at least until next fall, I probably won't seek this out again.

A 3.5 is as good as I can do here out of 5