Review #11: Omission Pale Ale

Sorry for the long delay between posts! I moved recently and am still without internet. I'm spending most days getting a feel for the new city and unpacking the seemingly endless stack of boxes.

Today's beer for review comes again from the Widmer Brothers - the Omission Pale Ale. I reviewed their lager in a previous post, which you can check out here.

Omission Pale Ale, like the lager, is brewed with barley and then deglutenized through an enzymatic process. It has 5.8% ABV. Like the other Omission beer, if you are a highly gluten-sensitive person, this beer may not be the right choice for you. It seemed ok to me, but every person is different.

I checked the gluten content on this batch on the Omission website, and it was listed as <10ppm. The 12oz bottle went into my usual pint glass.

Appearance: It pours a clear amber-copper color with a 1" off-white foam head.
Smell: I'm getting a bread aroma with light hops and citrus-y notes.
Taste: Flavor of malt, slightly sweet. Citrus notes with hoppy bitterness. This one tasted a little better after it warmed up a bit.
Mouthfeel: Medium body with moderate carbonation. Refreshing and a bit creamy. finishes dry with bitterness on the palate.

Overall: Omission Pale Ale is not my favorite gluten free beer. It's a bit bitter for my tastes, but not bad. I think put head-to-head, the Omission Lager would win easily. For an easily-found gluten free beer, it's pretty good. I think it would pass the taste test even among regular beer drinkers.

What do you think of this beer? Have you tried both varieties of Omission? Which is your favorite?

Review #8: Omission Lager

Apologies on the long delay between posts! The last week has been a bit crazy for me.

Without further ado, here is my review of Omission Lager from the Widmer Brothers Brewing Company.

This lager is brewed in Portland, Oregon. It is a lighter lager and has 4.6% ABV. It is brewed with barley and then de-glutenized through an enzymatic process, much like the Brunehaut Blonde I reviewed previously. Omission, like the Brunehaut ale, may not be the best choice for those that are particularly sensitive to gluten, since this beer began as a barley beer. You have to make that choice for yourself, though.

Omission has a cool feature on the website where you can enter the date on your bottle of beer and it will tell you how much gluten was in the batch that your bottle came from. My bottle was from a batch that tested  <10ppm of gluten. Good enough for me. I poured the 12oz bottle into my usual pint glass.

Appearance: The lager pours a clear straw yellow with a 1" white foam head that dissipates to leave behind a thin layer of foam. It tries to leave behind lacing but mostly fails to do so. 
Smell: Not much of a nose on this one. There is a slight bready smell with light yeast, a little nutty, and a hint of lemon.
Taste: Bready, grassy with a bit of hop flavor. Very light flavor. Leaves behind a slight bitterness on the palate, but is quite pleasant,
Mouthfeel: crisp, smooth, moderately carbonated. A little watery.

Overall: It doesn't have much going on, but I liked it. Tastes like a real beer and I probably wouldn't have guessed it was gluten free from taste alone. With Omission, the Widmer Brothers have presented an easy drinking, refreshing lager perfect for the Northwest's hot summer weather.  This would be a great beer to bring to a summer BBQ.

Review #5: Brunehaut Blonde Ale

Today's review is for Brunehaut Blonde Ale.

Brasserie de Brunehaut is a Belgian brewery. They brew several varieties of beer, four of which are gluten-free.This particular beer is an artisinal blonde ale made with "eco-friendly ingredients," or so the label states. The beer contains 6.5% ABV.

First off - if you buy this beer, open it over the kitchen sink! It was bursting with bubbles as soon as I got the cap off, which is why you see a bit of dampness below my beer glass in the photo. Oops.

As far as I can tell, Brunehaut brews this beer with barley, then de-glutenizes it through an enzymatic process that brings the finished product down to "less than 5ppm" of gluten. They say "less than 5ppm" because that's as low as current tests can detect. Current US standards do not allow for this beer to be labeled gluten-free, so you won't find those words on the label in the United States. However, you will find the lovely international gluten-free symbol on the cap, seen here.

I would like to say that people who are very sensitive to gluten may still react to this beer simply because of its ingredients. If you are one of these highly-sensitive people, then I would probably not recommend it. But that is your decision to make. I did not react to this beer and found it quite pleasant.

Onto the taste test. I poured from the 11.2 oz stubby bottle into my conical pint glass. The color is a cloudy butterscotch with a big, fluffy white head that left behind a little bit of lacing.

The beer has a slight apple-y smell with hints of yeast and grass, but the aroma itself is not very strong. The beer is a bit watery, but very smooth and lightly carbonated. It tastes like a typical Belgian blonde at the beginning, with some hits of apple and earthy hops. There is a slight bitterness in the aftertaste, but it is not unpleasantly bitter.

Basically, Brunehaut Blonde Ale tastes like a regular beer. I wouldn't have guessed it was gluten-free just from the taste. There was no weird sweetness, no grassy-ness, and no sorghum funk. Just a pretty damn good ale. This was a lovely end-of-the-day treat paired with a handful of pistachios. My only complaints are that it's a bit hard to find, and a little expensive for the size - this single bottle ran me a little over $4.