A Pint Half Full

Purchased from:
Gift but I've seen it at Whole Foods around here

ABV%:
5%

Type:
Wheat Ale

Color:
Straw yellow with a bit of cloudiness, barely existent, soapy, thin head

Aroma:
Ginger, lemons, with a wheat backbone.  Pretty fruity and light in the nose, fizzy

Taste:
Surprising tang and sourness from the lemon with a hint of the ginger and clove in the background.  Hardly any hop flavor to speak of.  I actually puckered at the taste.

Overall:
Wow.  What to say.  I expected alot from this.  My experience with white ales was Allagash White, Hoegaarden, and I loved both.  When drinking a white ale or other wheat beer, I expect a smoothness, a bit of citrus blended with spice, and overall a refreshing experience.  Perhaps my expectations were too high with this one because even though I got some of the things I expected, it was all destroyed by this sourness that dominated the flavor.

When I first poured the drink, it seemed thin based on the head and color.  I saw there was some leftover stuff at the bottom and kept pouring.  What came out was this deeper yellow stuff.  I have no idea what it was - maybe lemon/ginger residue that had settled out?  Anyway this made the first sip horrible as the sourness just blew me away.  I puckered and ended up with this bitter taste in the back of my mouth that I felt like washing away with water.  The over-carbonation helped in that it diluted this flavor a bit to make the drink bearable.  To make things worse, as the beer warmed, the beer became something like a lemon juice.

I'm really confused at what Kiuchi Brewing is going for here.  I get they are incorporating different flavors (as seen in their Red Rice Ale) in to their beer but it just fails here.  The balance is off and screws with the taste.  Behind it all there is a decent beer there, I think, but I couldn't get over the hump.

2/5

Purchased from:
Gift!

ABV%:
7%

Type:
Ale

Color:
Pours a reddish tinge, almost like watermelon juice.  Cloudy with a pink hue and with a light head.

Aroma:
Smells of a little spice and alcohol, similar to sake, since they are both rice-based with some tang.  Some sweetness as well.

Taste:
Smooth going down, really clean finish and overall tastes 'light'.  Definitely has its roots in the rice as it tastes a bit like sake though obviously not as strong or concentrated as sake.  There is a slight bitterness from the hops used in the brewing process and a sweetness in the finish.  Refreshing but could have more umph.

Overall:
Many brewers use ingredients other than the core of water, malt, hops and yeast during the brewing process to add an additional depth of flavor to the beer.  These items, such as fruit (cranberry, lemon), coffee, or chocolate are used sometimes to great success and other times, they end up gimmicky.  For example, the use of lemon in Sam Adams Coastal Wheat ends up detracting from the beer itself and seems to be a gimmick as it just doesn't taste good.  Other times, such as Kona Brewing's Pipeline Porter, which is brewed with coffee, the extra ingredient can add an interesting flavor but not kill the beer drinking experience.

Kiuchi Brewing Co. adds an extra ingredient their Hitachino Red Rice Ale, namely red rice.  They combine this with the traditional ingredients of malt and hops to create this beer.  To break down the different sugars from the malt and rice, the brewery must also use different yeast to break it down: ale yeast for the malt and sake yeast for the rice.

Does this mash of alternative ingredients contribute to a superior beer?  Well, yes and no.  If you know what sake smells and tastes like, this beer definitely will remind you of its purer brother.  There are hints of the rice wine in both its texture, aroma and flavor.  Because 25% of the grain make-up is rice and then hops, the bitterness from the hops is quite mild while the sweetness of the rice and malt tend to be more at the forefront of the flavor profile.  The sake part of the beer contributes to the light flavor and as such, finishes very clean leaving a slight sweetness.

This is an interesting beer and I feel that it straddles the line between becoming gimmicky and truly creating a new flavor.  I found that I wished the flavors were more 'in your face' and bolder.  But this is a nice beer that does a good job of balancing the flavors from the use of rice in the  beer.

3.25/5