Ordinary Brews: Mirror Pond

Now we’re on to the second of the Deschutes ales: Mirror Pond, their best seller.

Nose is a little skunky. This doesn’t seem right but it happens across multiple bottles. The rest of the beer is quite light but it also moves very quickly across my tongue. The flavor of malts and hops are hard to pick up. The finish is faintly bitter but the lingering flavor is less citrus or pine and more of that skunky flavor that the nose provides.

I’m wondering if I got a bad batch, or an old one. Or one that perhaps sat on the dock for a little too long. After the quality of the Black Butte, this is surprising.

Final note: the last beer in my sixpack tasted more appropriate. The nose had some pine notes, the finish was what I expected in bitterness and the skunky quality that I’d gotten in the other beers wasn’t nearly so pronounced. There’s still something a little awkward on the finish and this leads me to conclude that this particular sixpack had something go wrong. Nonetheless, based on the beer I bought, I couldn’t recommend it, with the caveat that this beer might’ve gone bad due to circumstances beyond the brewer’s control.