12 oz. bottle from a sampler. Pours auburn colored with a permanent one finger head. Subtle hop aroma with a smooth malt backbone. Taste is citrus hops and green apple with little maltiness to speak of. Thin body and slightly watery.

Bottle. Pours a decent enough looking amber with a fluffy, beige head that sits around an inch or so. Aromas are decidedly weak... a bit of grapefruit hopiness with some appley sweet malt. Flavor is a trainwreck of watery pale ale with jagged edges of medicinal bitterness that don’t have enough of a malt presence to help them fit in. Compared to most AB products it has flavor in spades, but it’s not really well thought out flavor.

Clear light amber body with a medium frothy off-white head. Sweet caramel and pale ale malt aroma and light floral hints. Sweet caramel flavor, light hints of floral hops. Medium light mouthfeel, somewhat high carbonation.

Not really a pale ale, eh? Poured a golden color with a modest foaming head. Initial hoppy blast in the nose, with that familiar spicy tinge of Saaz -hey this smells like a classic pilsner! (minus the bready malt component). Into the mouth it goes, more pilsneresque spicy saaz and other noble hop contributions, but essentially no malt character at all, very thin. Its as if they took regular Michelob and upped the finishing hop rate - and hey, that wouldn’t be a bad thing at all! In the end, strange herbal qualities arise, including a menthol note. If you don’t drink it cold and fast, forget it.

This sampler pack is proof AB does not stand for ’all bad’. This is as good as GD denver pale ale and much better than Saranac pale ale. Certainly not the offense of an IPA or imperial stout. This drink probably has the most hops I would like in a beer. I’m not sure how 75 cents per bottle could be outragious for this beer. Pours perhaps slightly darker than yer typical pale yellow american beer in my steeler stein. Has the micro brew flavor of an english pale ale. If a macro could possibly make a micro would it be called a macro-micro or perhaps a ’maicro’? If you have not matured to IPAs yet then this may be the beer for you. Medium carbonation. Finish is not offensive but certaily has some hops in there. Watch out micros, AB is catching on. Nice, but not as good as the wheat.