The Bar Towel

A textbook Black IPA. The nose is pure West Coast hops, the taste is clean rich malt with some good roasty notes and a good hit again of those Oregon or Washington State hops.

None of the "worty" taste I recall from some Trafalgar products in years past.

Excellent work, don't pass it up.

Gary

P.S. Great name and label graphics, too.

Drain pour for me. Didnt like it at all.

Mine had zero carbonation. It was a watery roasty mess. Total drain pour. I need to trust my instincts to avoid all things Trafalgar more.

TJ, I couldnt agree more. Seems like we had the same experience. Until the falgar changes things up, i wont be pissing my money away on any more of their offerings.

Odd how experiences can differ. Mine had full carbonation, and was not watery in the least for a 5% beer. The roasty notes were there but not dominating, quite subtle in fact. Maybe I had a different bottling...? Or maybe just different subjectivity...

Gary

I'm with Gary. Really liked this, the roastiness was just right. Maybe a little light on the carbonation, but definitely not flat. When you call em like you see em, you have to give credit to Trafalgar here for making a pretty decent beer!

My bottle was great. Best trafalgar beer ive ever had.

the joy of trafalgar... vast variation bottle to bottle, and pray that it hasn't been on the shelf long or their "excellent" QC takes over and turns every one into a giant mess. I've been burned more than enough times to stay away, even with a few glowing reviews.

Trafailgar

I had a bottle last night that was ok, i mean no infection or anything and it tasted fairly decent. While trafalgar does make some pretty bad stuff I think most people go in thinking its going to be an infected disaster regardless if it is or not. I bet if you slapped a Flying Monkeys label on this beer people would be singing its praises and going nuts trying to find it.

G.M. Gillman wrote:Odd how experiences can differ. Mine had full carbonation, and was not watery in the least for a 5% beer. The roasty notes were there but not dominating, quite subtle in fact. Maybe I had a different bottling...? Or maybe just different subjectivity...

It would be odd if we split the same bottle. And of all the aspects of a beer you can assess, I think carbonation is probably the least subjective. Mine had none. Yours did. Which speaks more to Trafalgar's quality control and lack of consistency than any personal bias we may have.

Anyway, it's beating a dead horse to Trafalgar bash, but I grabbed a bottle based on the original post in this thread and figured I'd chime in with contrasting opinion.

Oh for sure. I find most beers actually from craft breweries vary from batch to batch, but usually within a certain range. I "hear" people when they say they've had bad experience with Trafalgar, but I like the beers and find them much improved in the last couple of years.

Gary

Ill buy this if I ever see it, but the distrobution seemed pretty tight on this one, at least compared to other Trafalger releases

There is some on the shelf at Laird & Eglinton.

PeenSteen wrote:I had a bottle last night that was ok, i mean no infection or anything and it tasted fairly decent. While trafalgar does make some pretty bad stuff I think most people go in thinking its going to be an infected disaster regardless if it is or not. I bet if you slapped a Flying Monkeys label on this beer people would be singing its praises and going nuts trying to find it.

Having a Flying Monkeys label, or Great Lakes or DDC label or any label from a brewery that consistently puts out well made beers and has reasonably high QC standards will definitely cause people to seek them out more than they would seek out brewers with reputations of having poor quality control and beers that are hit and miss. I definitely want the scene to grow and have a lot of options available to me from as many Ontario brewers as possible, but if I try a few different offerings from a brewery and they are, for the most part, either off or just not well made I'm going to move on and forget about them until such a time that the feedback is positive enough to try it again.

People get psyched for releases from breweries who've earned our trust by making good products. When Spearhead puts out something new I'm going to be really pumped to try it as well because I liked their Hawaiian Style PA a lot, not because it's trendy to drink Spearhead.