Solace smells absolutely fantastic, which I loved. The floral and citrus blast makes me want to treat it like a wine, just appreciating the aroma for a while before drinking. The flavor doesn't quite back up the promise of the nose. While I like the depth and complexity of citrus, fruit, honey, and warm spice flavors, there is a little too much sweetness which is not balanced by quite enough hop flavors to give it crispness. It is a light style, which makes it very drinkable, but the body comes across as a little too rich and rounded for me.
I do like the beer and won't mind finishing the 6-pack I got for $6.99, but in the future I would probably choose their Pale 31 over the Solace in almost all occasions. I generally agree with the overall Beer Advocate and ratebeer scores for Solace. I think this beer has a lot of potential to bring out its great flavors, but isn't quite the balance my palate prefers. Recommended if you want to try an interesting fusion take on the hefweizen style, or try it if you're a big Firestone Walker fan like me.
I might have sounded a little too hard on Solace in my review. It was a good beer and I enjoyed it. But my hopes were very high, because it came from a great brewer who does an amazing pale ale and because it smells so darn good.
ReplyDeleteAlso that photo above does NOT accurately represent the beer color... it's really more of a hazy golden-amber color.