REVIEW 92: SWEETWATER 420 EXTRA PALE ALE

COUNTRY OF ORIGIN:  USA

BREWERY:  Sweetwater Brewing Company

STYLE:  APA

ABV:  5.4%

PURCHASE:  Draught (60-oz. pitcher), $12.00

SERVING:  Said pitcher, poured into chilled pint glass. Typical one-inch head from the tap to the pitcher. Standard pour from pitcher into the glass yielded just about the same. A slower pour produced about half that. Middle-of-the-road retention.

APPEARANCE:  Transparent, light copper-rust body with an off-white sudsy head. Light bubbling and quite decent lacing.

BOUQUET:  Essentially a tri-fold aroma of hops, pressed grains, and citrus. Although, a bit of caramel sneaks in there.

PALATE:  It's a pale ale, so you know what's front and center here. Moderate body with slightly cutting carbonation. Could stand to be more balanced. It's not that the hops are out of control; it's just that there's not much to counteract them, save for maybe a dash of generic citrus. Sweet finish and aftertaste, befitting the name of the brewery. So sweet, in fact, that it seemed almost artificial to me. Do they use NutriSweet in the brewing process?

MUSINGS AND METAPHORS:  Poor man's Sierra Nevada, if that. A tad better than average, but not awe-inspiring. 

Guess what? You know how this is called "420 Extra Pale Ale" and has the I-420* logo? Think that's what this is named after? NOPE. It's really named after the other 420. 4-20. That 4-20**.




GRADE:  C+

*I-420 was a proposed, but ultimately scrapped, auxiliary interstate in the metro Altanta area, during the late 1970s and early 1980s.

**Okay, okay--not in that context. It had nothing to do with weed. But it was first brewed on that date!