Salt Flats Tropic Rye Lager and Salt Lake Brewing Bee Sting
This week's palate stimulating selections are a perfect primer for autumn.
By Mike Riedel @utahbeer
Salt Flats - Tropic Rye Lager: This new beer features one of my favorite malts: rye. There are plenty of rye ales floating around out there, but not too many lagers. This rye lager also boasts a hop bill that is less typical of lager, and more so what you'd expect from a pale ale—yet somehow, it all seems to work.
The beer forms a chill haze, but is otherwise pretty clear, with a light tinge of amber. A less-than-aggressive pour from the beer tender produces about two fingers of dense, pillowy, sticky off-white foam; I can see a bubble or two of carbonation in the glass. The aroma is a nice mixture of citrus notes like mandarin orange, some tropical hints and spicy rye. It's definitely on the hoppy/rye side of the pale ale spectrum. The beer is mostly dry, and malts suggest bread crust and crackers.
The taste is similar to the smell, an initial hit of orange-flavored hops giving way to more tropical, floral flavors. The rye isn't too spicy, but it fits well here. There is just a hint of honey sweetness from the lagered fermentation to offset the other flavors. The body is medium/light in heft, and the beer has a smooth carbonation that makes it easy to drink.
Verdict: This is a vibrant lager, and full-flavored for sure. The hops balance it nicely, short of an IPA level, but plenty bitter, too. This is a great expression of rye in an easy-drinking beer—quality stuff here from Salt Flats.
Salt Lake Brewing - Bee Sting: Botanical beers stretch back thousands of years to the very first beers. Bee Sting from Salt Lake Brewing blends a little bit of today with very old-school piquant flavors. There's a beautiful pour to this, with a radiant, goldenrod hue. The beer is topped off by plenty of white and offsetting foam that complemented it beautifully. Most of the lacing left on the side of my pint glass was in a deep ring near the top. Tons of lavender and potpourri notes appear in the nose, as this felt like something straight out of a garden, with a ton of perfume and wheat thrown in for good measure.
The palate started with sunflower honey, possessing a gentle sweetness to it that contained zero sugar or overt kick. The end result is a beer that was quite natural and unrestrained, as the lavender and wheat only added to its appeal. An orange blossom-like slickness lingered on my palate long after this went down, the lack of carbonation only adding to the thick and everlasting appeal of this liquid. There was a perfect amount of 5.0 percent alcohol here—it felt like nectar without the tanginess. If you like your beers to be floral, natural and rustic, you have your match here. This came across as something transported to the future from centuries past.
Verdict: It's sort of tea-like, overly flavored—less like beer in the traditional sense—but if you think spiced ale, gruit-type things, I think this beer is one of a kind and truly incredible. All of the beers that I had the chance to try from Salt Lake Brewing Co. are different, inventive and, for the most part, supremely well-executed. I had a lot of fun with this one, and I'm looking forward to getting my hands on more of their stuff.
Both of these offerings are only available on draft. Luckily, both Salt Flats and Salt Lake Brewing have multiple locations to visit, so finding this week's featured beers shouldn't be too difficult.
As always, cheers!
About The Author
Mike Riedel
Local boy and pilot of City Weekly’s best gig, The Beer Nerd column since 2017. Current photojournalist at KSTU TV (Fox 13) and host of the Utah Beer Blog and Beer Nerd Radio on KUAA 99.9 FM radio.
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