The murky orange-gold beer doesn't sport a whole lot of the white head, and it boils right down to a very thin and patchy covering with a lot more around the edges of the glass. The aroma is delightfully hoppy with citrus and tropical fruits; I think I may smell a cracker malt, but it's buried.First sip is not nearly as smooth as I expected. It's prickly all around the edges, but it smooths as the beer goes down. The prickliness comes from pine and maybe a bit of flowers, and I don't know why I didn't smell it. The fruit meat is what smooths it out at the end, and this is a really complex - yet very simple - beer.
Tip-in is yeast with a carbonation tingle and some tropical fruit mix. The middle is a very smooth and quite delicious fruit smoothie of mangoes, grapefruit, oranges, plums, and pears with the malt fending off the bitterness responsibly. The finish is where the prickly pine and carbonation assert themselves to mask a bitter wave and a floral trail-off.
Bottom Line: Bless that little crab.
3.75/5
