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Patreon’s Choice #3: Odyssey Spottieottiehopaliscious

This is the third in a series of posts with notes on beers chosen for us by our Patreon subscribers. (If you want a ton of bonus stuff, and to tell us what to drink, sign up!)

Chris Gooch suggested that we try something, anything, from Herefordshire brewery, Odyssey. What Beer Ritz had in stock was Spottieottiehopaliscious, an American pale ale at 5.4% ABV. One 500ml bottle cost a rather wince-inducing £4.43.

The packaging is interesting, pitched somewhere between old school real ale and modern craft — vaguely folky, acoustic, fibrous.

The beer itself was golden with a loose but steady head, none of which, frankly, we were really able to focus on over the intoxicating, incredible aroma. It filled the air with blossom, with orange, grapefruit and peach. If something can smell sweet, this beer did, as if it was triggering some dormant ability to detect the ripest nearby fruit with a twitch of the nostrils.

It didn’t taste quite as astonishing, sadly. It seemed soft and pillowy on the palate and brought to mind tinned mandarin segments, or maybe some long-forgotten soft drink of the 1980s. Which is not to say it lacks bitterness — that sat there, adding weight, like a granite marble on the back of the tongue. There was, thank goodness, no onion or armpit, the appreciation of which in vogue characteristics is apparently beyond us. Overall it reminded us of Thornbridge’s fun, approachable pale ale Chiron, only looser and a touch funkier.

We found it, in short, thoroughly likeable and enjoyable. Nearly five-quid’s-worth of likeable? Maybe not quite.

One reply on “Patreon’s Choice #3: Odyssey Spottieottiehopaliscious”

I don’t think I was aware of Odyssey before this post, but coincidentally someone left a bottle of their Simcoe DIPA at our house after a party this weekend and it’s seriously solid take on an old-style bitter-and-mostly-transparent IIPA.

There’s an interesting cognitive dissonance (not to mention danger) at getting an 8.5% DIPA in a PBA-style 500ml bottle, though…

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