Brewery: The Matt Brewing Company, Utica, NY

Brewery Description: (from site) This Brown Ale is brewed with American malt and hops, and traditional ale yeast. Look for a sweet, chocolaty taste, with balanced bitterness resulting in a full flavored but smoothly drinkable beer.

Brew Style: American Brown Ale, 6.0% ABV

Recommended Glassware: English pint, Stein, Mug

The Ugly Truth: Yay, a beer review finally.  Sorry once again its been so long in between, I’m going to try and make sure I get back to the at least weekly schedule.  I recently picked up the Adirondack Trail Mix from Saranac, so the next six reviews will all be from that brewery, and I’m going to try and do two a week to get through it and on to other beers.

Alright, Saranac Brown Ale.  I like brown ales.  Sadly, this one, not so much.  I would call this one the hops lover’s brown ale.  I mean I love hops, but not in my brown ales.  So while having hops in there is still in line with the style, I found this to be borderline in its degree of hops and it killed the rest of the flavors for me.

The Brown Ale poured a solid medium to dark brown in color, with a creamy head on it sporting decent retention.   The head was a light tan in color and overall the beer looked really good, strong color and clear.  The aroma had a moderate hops profile, but to me lacked the malt to balance it out especially any chocolate or toasty notes.  The hops profile was lightly citrus in tone, so it did have some of the sweetness expected from a brown ale.

The taste was fairly dry, but not at all sweet or toasty like I’ve had from other brown ales and was distinctly lacking in the expected chocolate flavors the brewery description implies.  Maybe I just missed it or something.  There was this god awful strong citrus hops flavor that seemed to just dry out my mouth and pucker it up.  It wasn’t that pleasant strong hops flavor I like, it was like someone twisted a lemon over my tongue while drinking it.  Very acidic in characters, and completely dominated any of the malt flavors that may have been there.  Fortunately, the finish was crisp and the brown ale didn’t produce a lingering aftertaste.  I think that would have really destroyed any enjoyment I had, little that I did have.

I really didn’t like this beer overall.  It has some good qualities to it, if you like citrus hops flavor then this is one for you.  I found the described sweet and chocolate/toasty malt flavors to be completely lacking, or at least strongly out of balance with the hops profile.  I like most Saranac beers I’ve had, but this one was frankly disappointing for a brown ale in my opinion.  As always, try it for yourself to see.

Verdict: 5 out of 10 bottlecaps.