InstaReview

I’m about to do something I don’t normally do, so bear with me. This is the Northbound Lager from @sidelaunch. I’m told it has replaced Mountain Lager. Mountain Lager being the beer I’ve probably bought more of than any other beer in the past 2 years. Getting a 24 at my local Loblaws was a normal thing. So I’ll admit that perhaps my judgement is clouded. But I’ve also been drinking beer with an eye to review for longer than I’ve had children. I have a background as a trained chef, and I have better-than-average experience with tasting things like wine, spirits (especially whisky/ey), coffee, and sake. This is all to say, personally I trust my abilities enough to say this: this beer isn’t very good. It certainly isn’t “bad”; there are no flaws (aside from the recipe) that I pick up. It’s just boring, overly sweet, and unusually mediocre compared to every other beer Sidelaunch makes. My initial reaction on drinking this was that it tasted like the sales and marketing team said they needed a beer to compete with Stella, and that would be cheap enough to offer a price deal to licensees. It tastes like any number of contract-brewed “lifestyle brand” cold yellow beers. I know enough about beer to know there are hops in here, but I honestly can’t taste them. All I get is an overly sweet, fizzy, malty beverage. If I didn’t know Sidelaunch so well, I would suspect there was an adjunct in here. To be clear: this beer could be scored well in a contest in the North America Lager category. It stands with the likes of Canadian or Coors Banquet. Sadly, it’s boring as fuck, and hopefully represents an usual misstep for a brewery I hold close to my heart, and not a harbinger of things to come. I’m sorry guys. But this beer really isn’t good. I bought one can. I wouldn’t take a free one now. Actually, I dumped about 3/4 of the one I paid money for, down the drain. Very disappointed .
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