The Kernel, Pale Ale (Mosaic), 5.1%abv. (American Pale Ale)

Purchased at the Kernel Brewery in London, bottle-conditioned in a 500ml brown bottle, bottled on 04/02/13, BB 04/06/13, served lightly chilled in Tripel Karmeliet long-stemmed tulip sniffer.

4/5 Appearance: pours a murky, dark amber colour with a relatively low level of carbonation and a well-lasting off-white creamy head. Looking handsome for a non-filtered and non-pasteurised bottled beer.

4/5 Smell: on top of the juicy sweet pale malts comes intensely exotic fruity hops and fruit esters, the nose is packed of passion-fruit, guava, ripe white-flesh grapefruit, and a salty-sweet edge endowed by the yeast sediments. Overall, this pale ale is overwhelmingly hoppy, more like a modern take on the APA style but with more aromatic hops and a lesser malt body.

4/5 Taste: very smooth, nearly flat-ish actually, the flavour is mainly yeasty-bitter on a thin platform of very mild pale malts, and underlined by tangy citrus peel- and bitter guava-like aromatic hoppiness; the aftertaste prolongs the hop impact, in the form of a deepening wave of dried leafy hop bitterness, so bitter and tannic-chewy, that the dried herbal and piney edge of it seems to linger at the back of the palate forever. Also lingers is the slightly stinky edge of the yeastiness, which accompanies the overall hop profile pleasantly well.

4/5 Mouthfeel & 4.5/5 Overall: softly carbonated, rather clean, despite the yeastiness in the beer, the palate is at the same time constantly chewy due to the level of hop bitterness at presence. All in all, this is a medium-bodied, exotic fruity and thirst-quenching hoppy pale ale that is deliciously bitter in this bottle-conditioned form, and should also be fantastic to be enjoyed on tap at the brewery!

--Yau (tasted 06/03/2013, notes transcribed 09/03/2013)