7.1

Appearance - 10 | Aroma - 7 | Flavor - 7 | Texture - 6 | Overall - 6.5

2004 draught @ Redbones. Appearance is quite lovely for the style, dark orange/copper, with some auburn hints and yellow/golds around the edges. Large foamy white head typical of Cisco. Aroma of wet, soily, green hops, low in bitterness and quite earthy (something like fuggles), also a hint of malt, lightly sweet. Flavor starts out with a sweet, juicy malt creaminess, followed by a big hops flavor that is quite the opposite of what I was expecting. No huge unbalanced bitterness, just a good floral hops flavor, lightly bitter, with the malt easily standing up to the hops. Strange yeast and malt notes through the middle, almost a vegetable quality that I cant put my finger on. Carbonation, is quite good for Cisco, I guess being on tap helps it, as it is lively, but not sharp and creates no thinning on the body. A very flavorful, medium-full bodied ale with tons of malt and fresh hops. 7/5/7/4/15

2004 bottle sampled 3/6/05 Well wouldn’t you know it, another hopeful that I brought to the tasting ended up sucking. Perhaps draught Cisco beers are ultimately better, and it would make sense that it was better having it fresh on draught, but still, this bottle is barely 6 months old and it already is thin/oxidized somewhat, and has strange spoiled fruit notes. The green hops still come through fairly pleasantly, but the body is a sad, sad memory of what I had on draught. A watery, thin mess of a palate. 7/5/6/2/11