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 #10: Clos des Ducs Premium Hard Cider

Clos des Ducs is a fermented apple cider from Brittany, France. It has 5% ABV and comes in a 11.8oz/330ml bottle. It does not have any added sugars, but appears to have had its sweetness bumped up from the addition of concentrated apple juice. I enjoyed this cider from my usual pint glass.

Appearance: Pours a cloudy dark orange with a small amount of whitish fizz on top. The dark color was fairly surprising. My photo makes it appear clearer and lighter than it was. I'm still working on my lighting and photography
Smell: Apples, straw, must, sweet fruit, plenty of apple peel smell on the nose.
Taste: Sweet, juicy apple. Slightly astringent. It leaves the taste of yeast on the back palate, but finishes sweet.
Mouthfeel: Lightly carbonated and thick.
Overall: I liked this cider. It reminds me of a slightly more complex Martinelli's, the taste of which brings to mind Thanksgivings at home with my family. My final verdict is that it's not bad, but nothing terribly exciting either. I think there are more interesting ciders out there, but I enjoyed sampling this one.

Review #9: New Grist Gluten Free Session Ale

New Grist is a Pilsner-style session ale brewed by Lakefront Brewery in Milwaukee. It contains 5.1% ABV. According to their website, New Grist was the first beer to get the "certified gluten free" stamp from the US government. New Grist is brewed with sorghum and rice. It is, however, their only gluten-free variety among many gluten-containing beers.

I put off trying New Grist for a long time after reading some scathing reviews of the beer online. However, I decided to give it another try while at a pub with my extended family because everyone else was having beer. I also figured it was worth a shot because most of my pagehits come from my reviews of beer and ciders that are more commonly available. :) I drank this beer out of some weird tiny beer glass that made smelling difficult. I got beer up my nose twice trying to get a good smell in and made a fool of myself in public. All for you, dear readers!


Appearance: New Grist poured a pale, crystal clear straw yellow with no head.
Smell: Has that familiar sorghum smell, but is very faint (note smell-testing issues above). There is a slight sweet fruit smell in there as well.
Taste: Obvious sorghum flavor in this one. New Grist is also slightly sweet, with a grassy flavor note not unlike spinach.
Mouthfeel: Slightly astringent mouthfeel with medium-light carbonation level.
Overall: This beer gets a big "meh" from me. As far as gluten-free beer goes, I've had a lot worse. But this definitely wouldn't be my first choice.

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 #7: Original Sin Pear Cider

This cider was a celebratory drink, because I graduated! I'm done with all my undergrad assignments and am awaiting my diploma in the mail. Now it's time to join the real world. :P


Original Sin Pear Cider is made in New York, and has 4.5% ABV. It is a traditional dry cider that is fermented from pear juice with no added sugar. I poured it into my usual conical pint glass.

Appearance: The cider pours a translucent, crystal clear pale yellow with lots of bubbles. It pours like champagne - very fizzy, then quickly mellows down to a tiny ring of foam around the edge of the glass.
Smell: There is a slight pear and honey aroma.
Taste: The taste is tart and slightly astringent at the start, but finishes sweet with a light pear flavor.
Mouthfeel: Original Sin Pear is highly carbonated with an average body. It is smooth and very crisp.

Overall: The smell and mouthfeel remind me a lot of drinking the house champagne at my favorite French bar during happy hour. I would be as happy as anything to drink this cider paired with a snack plate of fancy olives and prosciutto. I just need someone to get me some fancy olives and prosciutto first. Other pear ciders I have tried in the past have been much too sweet for my tastes. However, I was pleasantly surprised by this cider. Original Sin Pear was a tasty cider that I would definitely buy again.

Review #6: Fox Tail Gluten Free Ale

I hope everyone is having a good weekend! I decided to kick mine off with a beer, and chose the can of Fox Tail that had been sitting in my fridge for a couple weeks.

Fox Tail ale is brewed with rice and hops and made in Nevada by the Joseph James Brewing Company. It is 5% ABV and is the only canned gluten free beer I have tried so far.

I poured the beer from the can into a conical pint glass. It pours a clear light yellow color (I didn't light my photo very well, oops!) with a bright white head that leaves behind a bit of lacing.

Fox Tail has a sweet lemon scent with floral undertones. The mouthfeel is thin, but fairly well-carbonated.

The taste, however? Yuck. It has a soapy, bitter, metallic taste that was not nice at all. I gave Fox Tail the benefit of the doubt and figured it just needed a bit of time to open up, maybe warm up a bit. So I let it sit for fifteen minutes, then came back to try it again. Still the same - Horrible.

The verdict: this was the worst gluten-free beer I've tried so far. I could not even finish half of it. Fox Tail is now baiting slugs in my garden.

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.