New Grist Session Ale

Posted: February 17th, 2008 | Author: Stacy | Filed under: Beer Reviews, Craft Brew, Gluten-free, What's that in your fridge? | No Comments »

It’s an awesome sunny pre-spring day here in town, and I can’t think of a better way to celebrate it than blogging in the sun from my backyard while sipping a beer after having done some yardwork. Kathy and I walked over to Belmont Station on Friday evening and bought four gluten-free beers that I haven’t seen elsewhere, so I had to buy them. And a cranberry cider. But back to the beer…

I’m having a Lakefront Brewing New Grist Session Ale, which actually does taste like beer! It’s a lovely clear golden color with a nice light bubble on the tongue. While clearly not as malty as a “normal” session ale, it has a proper beer aroma of light hops and the metallic tang I associate with lager style beers. I think New Grist is probably more of a lager than an ale in flavor, but if they fermented it at ale temperatures then I guess it’s an ale!

Like the other sorghum beers I’ve had, this one does have an acrid bitter tang to the flavor that must be from sorghum since it really doesn’t taste like hops bitterness. It’s more back of the tongue, again like Stella Artois or even Japanese beers. I’m finding that having sorghum beer with food masks the bitterness pretty well without losing the flavor of the beer. Part of the success of the New Grist ale is probably that it’s also made with rice, so it’s not purely sorghum like Bard’s Tale or Redbridge. That probably explains the nice golden color, too.

I also have to give kudos to Lakefront Brewing for the nice packaging design for New Grist. It’s funky and art nouveau and makes me feel like I’m  having a craft brew made by folks who care about all the details. As someone who frequently chooses to try a new beer based on the label design, I would have picked up New Grist even if I weren’t on a gluten-free mission right now.

If I could never drink malt beer again, New Grist would definitely be an acceptable surrogate beer. Of course, I haven’t tried the three styles (a dubbel, a tripel, and an amber) of Green’s gluten-free Belgian beer we bought, so I may change my mind… But I could certainly see fortifying myself with the occasional New Grist in the summer when a light, slightly bitter beer sounded delicious on a hot day.

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