Two cans of deer

Last October I provided a rundown of a selection of craft-ish beers from Canadian lager giant Moosehead. Turns out there were more. To catch you up:

Small Batch Hoppy Light Lager tells you exactly what it thinks it is, although it's a rich amber colour, not the wan yellow of industrial light lager. 3.8% ABV is inarguably light. The flavour description is ambitious, proferring "tropical - citrus - pine". That translates in reality to a soft stonefruit flavour, so the pine is the first casualty and I'm not sure there's really a whole lot of citrus either. But I will grant it tropical, in that broad melon and peach kind of way. There's a malt contribution as well, bringing wholesome crunchy biscuit, and a smooth tannic tea quality with a little spark of gunpowder spice. It's far from spectacular, but for something promising to be no more than "light lager" it's very good. 

That mix of peaches and tea can also be found in Derek's Single Hop American IPA. Whoever designed the packaging did not understand the brief at all, because the titular single hop is not named on it: the kind of rookie mistake you might expect from an industrial lager brewery new to this sort of thing. It's a substantial 6.1% ABV, and while the light lager didn't taste weak, this doesn't taste so strong, the alcohol held well in check. It is sweeter, though, with the ice tea profile built up to more of a chewy fruit candy effect. While the other one is a superior example of its genre, this is rather lacklustre. It's missing any punchy bitterness and the fruit isn't fresh or zingy, and rather muted in general. I should add that, in contravention of labelling law, there was no best-before date on the can, so I have no idea how old the beer was -- not the first time I've had this problem with Moosehead. All told, it's inoffensive but unimpressive; perfectly drinkable but not near the high-end of IPA these days.

Whether there will be any more or not remains to be seen. The distributor has been very vocal on the Twitters about the problems thrown up by compliance with the can deposit return scheme. I'm guessing that requirement is actually being enforced, unlike the best-before one.