Bear Republic / Fat Head’s / Stone TBA
Alcohol by Volume: 7.1%
Look for this beer and more at Full Throttle Bottles in Georgetown.

Intro:
“What the hell is a TBA” might not have been the exact thing to come to my mind when I saw this beer, but it was some form of that thought. It turns out that TBA is an abbreviation for “Texas Brown Ale”. It is essentially a brown ale version of a black IPA. Stone has been loving the beer collaborations lately. They released 5 different collaboration beers in 2011 and this is their first of 2012. In fact, this beer isn’t dissimilar to their previous collaboration, the “More Brown Than Black IPA”.

Bear Republic Brewing and Fat Head’s Brewery joined forces with Stone for this one, and all three breweries know their way around a handful of hops quite well. So, even without knowing what TBA meant it was a good guess that this one would have a strong hop presence.

Description: Pours a very hazy reddish brown with big off-white head that looks like it would stick around forever if you left it there. Big aroma of pine and citrus pops out with some lightly sweet caramel coming through as well. Focus in the taste is lots of grapefruit and floral hop character that comes across a bit soapy. Lightly sweet toasted and very light roast malt combine to carry the showcase of hops. A fairly intense bitterness finishes things off, but it isn’t too over the top for the style. You can tell there was a little something extra there, but without knowing that brown sugar and molasses were added to the beer, I’m not sure that that I could pick them out.
This definitely has a different character than a straightforward brown ale base, with less toasted/nutty malt coming through and more robust sweetness. It’s interesting and surely enjoyable if you’re a hophead.

Verdict: Worth Trying
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In the interest of full disclosure to satisfy the FTC’s law, this review was of a sample bottle received from the brewery.