6.2

Appearance - 8 | Aroma - 6 | Flavor - 6 | Texture - 6 | Overall - 6

Bottle at the brewery, 7/1/23. Clear amber. Small, off-white head, low retention. As, say, a barrel-aged wild ale, or Belgian ale, or something along those lines, this is ok. The problem being that it's supposed to be a rauchbier. It has noteable smoke and that's about the only thing remotely identifying it as such. Everything else is nothing like a rauchbier and it's odd that it's transformed so much from the base beer, while also not really containing much rye character. Some specialty malt, light wood, light oxidation. Almost a belgian ester character. The smoke is deep and delightful, at least.