All About Beer Magazine

Beer Talk

Stumptown Tart

Published January 2013, Volume 33, Number 6

• Roger Protz

  Perhaps as a Brit I’m missing something, but I’m not enamored of the name or the label. But let’s concentrate on the beer. It’s 7.8 percent with an amber color and spicy hops, peach and apricot fruit on the nose with a ripe, fresh-bread malt note. Sweet fruit dominates the palate but is balanced by peppery hops and chewy, lightly toasted grain. The bittersweet finish has rich, corn-like malt, spicy hops and—dare I say—a tart fruit note, now blackcurrant rather than peach. It finally ends dry, fruity and hoppy.

• Garrett Oliver

  It’s a beautiful color, a sort of pink/dark orange like a hue from a great sunset. The fruit pretty much leaps out of the glass, smelling a bit like a new brand of natural soda. Light bitterness gamely meets the fruit acidity at the front of the palate and plays through the bone-dry center. The beer signs off suddenly, with a twinge of acid, forgetting to say goodbye. Technically adept, even admirable, this beer still left me pining for some element of funky complexity. With a hunk of fresh goat cheese, though, it would be hard to beat.