Bitter Brewer (Surly Brewing, Brooklyn Park, MN)

This light golden-orange beer with a white head packs a punch of hops. Clearly bitter, and, like many of Surly brews, calling it a style is a bit of a misnomer. Anyone who really likes English Bitter listed on BeerAdvocate as a style will be surprised by this one. For me the nose is a great invitation of twangy hops, but the taste is a bit too much. The bite is acrid, and tough, but not in a totally bad way. It's well brewed to be just that--but it's not fun for me to drink, and the malty base and body are too weak to match up to the hops, which linger ad infinitum and build uncomfortably over the course of the beer. With that said, I can see why those very things would be a positive for a lot of people.