BONE HAUS BREWING ENGLEMANN’S ELIXIR PRICKLY PEAR PALE ALE – A review.

 

By Daver

Alright, let’s get local again. Bone Haus Brewing, over in Fountain Hills, has the kind of décor a little nerd goblin like myself truly appreciates. The whole brewery is done up like a haunted mine, with coffins and skeletons and bone piles all over. Not just for Halloween, it’s year round! The beer list is worth sampling, the last time I was there. Now due to the emergency brakes getting thrown on the world for a whole year, the beer list has no doubt changed. I recalled there was a prickly pear sour some time ago, rich and tangy sweet and reddish if my memory serves. Unfortunately, I have no photos, nothing written, and a failed Google search, so maybe I imagined it. Nevertheless, I felt like a prickly pear ale was in order. I went to the nearest Total Wine and picked up this brew, Englemann’s Elixer Prickly Pear Pale Ale. Sounds like fairly easy drinking for a hot summer day, doesn’t it?

The can label has its own narrative for the origin of this brew: “Dusty has a talent for discovering opportunity wherever it may lie. When he learned of the powerful properties of the prickly pear fruit from the botantist (that’s their typo, not mine) Dr. Englemann, by sheer happenstance, he concocted a plan to fund our continuing search for my lost uncle. He learned how to turn this widespread fruit into an elixir, one he could sel to townsfolk for their clear benefit. The good doctor advised against it, but Dusty is… persuasive.” What did Dusty do? What happened next will surprise you!

And the surprise is, this is not like any pale ale that I’ve drank before. This tastes more like a lager, something mild and easy to drink. At first it feels like you’re drinking a domestic beer, light flavor, wheat-y, crisp in the beginning. What I don’t taste is hops. That's a relief, many pale ales I've found can be overly generous with the quantity of hop in their brewing. Then, you get the essence of prickly pear, only not to obnoxious extremes. Here's the thing about most prickly pear products you may encounter from Arizona tourist spots: they're heavily sweetened. But this ale is hardly sweet at all, not till it reaches the back of your tongue as you swallow. Same goes for the bouquet, you can detect prickly pear but it’s not overwhelming. It’s perfume-y, but not cloying.

It’s not a bad summertime beer. But there’s not much else I can say about it. The body’s a cloudy yellow, foamy at first pour, 5% ABV. It’s alright, Bone Haus produced another quality brew, no question. It’s also boring. It’s a safe, inoffensive beer. I don’t regret picking this up, but it doesn’t stand out.

San Tan Brewing Company - Part 4: So Long, And Thanks For The Beer

Greetings fellow beer snobs, it's me again, your humble beer imbiber Daver with the final chapter in my examination of local brewery San Tan Brewing Company.  I wasn't all that sure there was anything left to say about San Tan, so I went back for one last sit-down at the bar. Glad I did! I sampled four of their specialty pilot concoctions, and a year-round brew that's only available on draft. We'll start there, with the Sunspot Golden Ale.

Sunspot Golden Ale is an American blonde ale, a clear yellow in color with a modest head at first pour that fades out fast. The bouquet is light, I can just barely pick up notes of wheat and barley, likewise with the body when it reaches your tongue. The finish is crisp and clean, but a little more robust than I would expect from a blonde ale. It's simple, well-crafted, and its light flavor and cleaner finish makes this an ideal summer brew! Why isn't this one in stores?

Now we're on to the pilot brews, available only at the tap. The Imperial IPA Heavy D is a stronger version of San Tan's Devil Ale, a deep, foreboding red ale with a thin head.  The bouquet is sweet with notes of caramel, citrus, and hints of the hops. The hops bitterness is strong, just at the utmost limit of tolerable. Harsh like Kentucky bourbon, a robust body that isn't too heavy, with a rich finish.

Next is the Moonjuice I.W.A., the acronym stands for India Wheat Ale. An American IPA, it looks like a hefeweizen brewed like an IPA. The Moonjuice is a dark yellow color at first pour, with a thick head, a light floral scent, and the taste of bananas balanced with the hops' bitterness and notes of lemon limey goodness.

The Hibiscus Pale Ale, pictured above served in a goblet, is a brew the color of a red chardonnay. In fact, chardonnay is an accurate descriptor overall, this is like beer brewed from a good table wine. The head lingers, fadining unevenly and clinging to the glass sides. Floral bouquet, rich flavor like a wine cooler that means fucking business, and oddly refreshing in the finish. Can you tell that I liked this a lot? I liked this a lot. Please, San Tan, make more of this!

And the Arizona Farmhouse, a Farmhouse ale being a brew crafted in cooler months and held in storage till summer, has a cloudy yellow color and modest head that fades fast. The cloudiness is likely from the yeast in its brewing, and you can pick up hints of the yeast in the flavor, as well as a more prevalent banana character. The bouquet also has notes of banana and faint yeast traces, but also cloves and clover. The finish is unusually fizzy, but that's normal for a highly carbonated beer like a Farmhouse ale.

Friends, if you want to try anything by San Tan Brewing Company? GO TO THE ACTUAL BREWERY. Sure, they have six packs in the store, and a few of them are actually pretty good, but San Tan is the example proving that beer is better on tap than in the can, and at that best at the source. Plus, their pilot brews are always changing, between those and their seasonals, you won't know what you'll get. Hell, by the time you read this, the batches will have changed and no telling if those I've just told you about will come back. I really enjoyed the pilot brews, the care and creativity that goes into them makes me want to go back to see what they'll have now.

In conclusion? San Tan is like a star baseball player, they won't hit them all out of the park, but when it's a home game, they hit it right into the stadium lights showering sparks all over Robert Redford.

San Tan Brewing Company - Part 1: On The Market

Hello my friends, it's your humble beer blogger Daver again, and today on tap we've got a, shall we say, reprint of a review? You see, for several months I was contributing content to an Arizona web-zine, but the site has since changed its focus from local events and reviews to a blog about the editor's friends' parties. Can't say I agree with the new direction, but it's not my webspace or my problem. But that means that everything I contributed? HOSED. Now, I just can't be having with informative beer reviews being lost, so I'm importing what I've backed up, starting with the San Tan Brewing Company.

Based in Chandler, AZ, San Tan opened in 2007 and has since earned name recognition around the Valley as one of the top breweries in Arizona. This brewery has created a diverse range of craft brews to offer at their microbrewery restaurant in Chandler's historic district, at bars around Arizona, and in grocery stores and liquor stores. They're popular enough that they've been working towards expanding their distribution to neighboring states for almost a year now. San Tan offers their four most popular brews in six packs of aluminum cans, and a rotating seasonal at their respective time of year.  

Wait, aluminum cans? Oh dear... as a beer snob, I'm prejudiced against anything aluminum smaller than a keg jacketing my beer. It just doesn't taste right to me! Nobody should have to drink from the can. But in the spirit of fairness, let's see how these cans stack up. We'll start with two of their year-round offerings, and one of their seasonals.

First we've got the Devil's Ale, their pale ale offering.  On first pour, the head is thin and fades out fast. It clings to the glass unevenly, and doesn't linger for long either. It's a clear amber colour. The bouquet is surprisingly strong with the malted hops, an almost pungent sweetness if you tilt the glass back a bit to increase the surface area of the top of the brew in the glass. OK, that might be a little more complicated than you should have to go for drinking any craft brew, but it works that way. Taste-wise, oh yes. Strong with the hops, it is. But not that strong. You really have to drink this in a glass to get the full experience. Straight out of the can (dear god I hate cans) it's almost watery with the body. Poured properly, you get the effervescence of the carbonation and a bit of bite. The carbonation fades out faster than usual, and the brew mellows out as it does to the point the hops become the finish instead of the body. There's almost none of the caramel-y sweetness you'd expect from a brew with malted hops. Seriously, drinking this out of the can and out of a glass is like night and day. Night. And. DAY. At first I thought it was a let-down even with an ABV of 5.5 because of the can, but I'm glad I went a little further.


Next is the Hop Shock IPA, and boy howdy the hops are strong with this one. On first pour, it's a clear amber with a porous head. The foam doesn't cling to the sides of the glass, but rather hangs and slips slowly into oblivion. I can taste the malt, and I can smell it in the bouquet, a sweet and slightly citrus-y aroma. The but the hops are extraordinarily bitter. The body feels a little syrup-y in the finish, and notes of tangerines come through. Carbonation seems to be a thing, San Tan brews lose their fizz fairly quickly. This doesn't hurt the brew, it's just interesting. And with an ABV of 7.1 that's a lot of interest. Again, pouring this in a glass makes a vast difference over drinking it out of the can.

Now, the seasonal selection for today is the Mr. Pineapple, a Pineapple Wheat Beer. Oh man, that would probably pair well with a krabby patty. How did they come up with this? That's not to say it's bad, it's quite refreshing, as expected from a spring wheat beer. On first pour you get a head of foam that pops and sizzles, and fades out completely with no lacing or drizzling along the glass. The color is a cloudy dark yellow, like the syrup from a can of sliced pineapples. It has similar notes of banana in the taste and bouquet as you'd find in the Hefeweizen, and floral notes and some coriander, even a hint of oregano if you can believe that, that pleases the nose. And with an ABV of 5.0, the alcohol content doesn't overpower the overall quality. You can easily taste the real pineapple juice balanced out with the banana, that citrus-y tang all the way to the finish. Unlike most of the others, the San Tan carbonation was modest and subtle, fading into the background with each sip without going flat. All told, for a funny concept, it works really damn well.


Check back in a little bit for Part 2, I'll be covering an amber, a wheat beer, and their seasonal porter. Fun times, my friends.