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Peter LaFrance



Thursday, April 10, 2008

A taste of… Left Hand Chainsaw Ale



Left Hand Brewing Co.
Longmont, CO USA

Preface:
The promotion material that came with this product was a little bit obscure. Therefore I know little about the lineage behind this brew. As you can see from the picture, the label and information is painted on. It tells me that this is 1 pint 9.36 fluid ounces, or 750 ml. It was bottle conditioned in 2008 and was brewed and bottled by the Left-Hand Brewing Co. Ltd. Longmont, CA. On the back of the bottle the brewers claim “Chainsaw is a connoisseur version of our award-winning Sawtooth Ale, designed to befuddle silly generalizations about life. We hope you enjoy!” There is no information about alcohol by volume on the bottle.

Appearance:
This is a deep red copper colored brew. It is quite effervescent and topped by a thick, rich creamy glistening small to medium bubbles that form a mocha brown head that falls slowly and laces well.

Aroma:
As soon as you open a bottle of this beer you get a malty aroma. Once poured into the glass the hop aromas become much more evident. That moment between sip and lip underlines the promise of a well hopped beer.

Mouth feel:
By the mouth feel alone I’m going to guess that this is probably a 7 to 8% alcohol by volume beer. It is, without a doubt, full-bodied.

Flavor:
The first and most emphatic impression is one of malt, Caramel and Rock-Candy, which are chased and satisfactorily overcome by a bitter hop flavor that marries so well with the sugar that it is hard to tell the two apart at the very end.

Finish:
As noted above, the combination of hop bitterness and malt sweetness comes together so well at the end that they are almost indistinguishable. It would’ve been interesting to have had a second bottle of this that could have been put down for a year to see if the two flavors fell apart over time.

Comments:
This is a well constructed beer that is both highly alcoholic, highly hopped and has massive amounts of malt. All of these flavors and ingredients are blended a very well. There are two places where I would suggest this beer could find itself comfortable at table. The first would be to accompany a huge chunk of black and blue beef steak. The char and sweetness of the steak would match very well with the sweetness and the hop flavors of this beer. On the other hand, this brew would also get along famously with a good slice of British Stilton cheese. The unique tang of that cheese would go particularly well with the hop flavors in this beer.

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