Origin: Spain
Type: Pale ale
Color: Coppery brown
Alcohol content: 5%
Recommended serving temperature: 10ºC/50ºF
Brewery: Tierra de Frontera
I have decided to write today's post on another Spanish craft beer, again from Andalucía (the region that drinks the most beer in Spain), but this time a Pale Ale.
Its name is Tierra de Frontera and it is from Jaén, a province specially known for its olive oil.
It is very soft brown in color, amber, one might say almost copper. Even though it has a notable amount of carbonation, which provides for a steady flow of small bubbles to its surface, it does not have a significant amount of foam. It does keep nevertheless a small uniform layer which it maintains for the whole time.
Its smell, like in the case of vintage wine, varies greatly depending on the amount of time that the bottle has been open.
Upon my first whiffs, I mostly got spices, something which dissapeared over time and I did not really pick up either in smell nor in taste after that. Since that initial experience went by, the main smells I got from this beer were more those of white fruit and caramel. The mix makes it hard to pinpoint exactly the white fruits it reminded me more of, as the caramel adds a sweet and dense touch which throws you off, however if I had to guess I would say it was a creamy, but at the same time pretty acidic pear.
Not much of this later comes on to reproduce itself in the taste, giving the Tierra de Frontera, like the Son Pampa, and like the post-op Nicole Kidman, a very different appearance from the nose to the mouth.
The first flavor that comes to you when you drink it is a toasted one. It does not go as far as to give out any sort of coffee like flavor, but this beer does make you see from the start that you are dealing with malts which have been roasted.
The taste you perceive from these roasted malts is closer to the one of a nice soft caramel than that of chocolate or coffee. Nevertheless, even there, the sweet flavors are only barely apparent. Indeed, they stay more in the smell of this beer than in its flavor.
This is why, after the brief initial period where the sweetness is apparent in the taste, the roasted flavors soon come to remind you more of some soft, not very salted, nuts.
The taste is quite dry, but also not without body and only moderately bitter. This in my mind makes it the perfect beer to have more in mid-afternoon than in the morning, more to fill up an incipient hole in the stomach after a soft lunch, than to spur on hunger before it, if that makes any sense. This point of view is I guess also brought on by the fact that the gas helps to fill you up faster than the moderate alcohol content reaches your brain, thereby not giving you time to induce that reflex which makes you run for food after a couple of bottles on an empty stomach.
Despite the above, this beer is very versatile and can go perfectly with many foods. If I had to settle on one one kind though I would say it probably favors not too spicy poultry and beef dishes, where the bitterness and the nuts will blend in gently. This versatility is in my opinion the best attribute of this beer and precisely the reason it is hard to find displeasing.
Comments
Post a Comment