Cervezas La Balluca

Sometimes people like to help you in your hobbies. When your hobby involves food and drink, it’s always easy to pick up a little something on a trip as a gift. Even now, there are local microbreweries and craft breweries working along steadily, supporting local hop farms and bars. I have not heard of La Balluca, maybe if some of the old beer stores were still open they would have had a few bottles. As it is, a pack of three bottles was gifted to me by a friend who was taking a trip through Guadalajara. They all looked like pale ales at first, but on opening the package I saw that there was an English brown, a wheat, and, yes, one pale ale. The brown and the wheat seem to have had some mishap occur; both of them were missing some liquid and the brown had some residue around the cap where some leakage must have happened. In spite of the loss, it’s mostly there, and probably still perfectly fine, so into the shitty fridge with 5 Maltas brown!

It is certainly a brown ale, cloudy with an off-white head, and a sweet-and-sour aroma. It’s like a lemon glazed cinnamon roll. The head dies back pretty quickly, but not completely, leaving a little cap. It has a strong malty flavor, with a little bit of gritty texture. The sourness is also there, very light, just balancing the bready, grainy taste. It has the hallmarks of its style, the warm roundness, the tingles on the tongue, it hits high notes for summer and low notes for times of less oppressive temperatures. As expected, the shitty fridge did not cool this beer way down, even in a bottle over a couple of days, but it works well with the style. It’s a soothing beer for the evening, probably not one that would take center stage, but it’s a welcome accompaniment.