7.8

Appearance - 8 | Aroma - 8 | Flavor - 7.5 | Texture - 8 | Overall - 7.5

Bottle from the brewery, which sadly, just closed. But not gone. Still at Eataly and apparently setting up brewing at the West End icon the Cheese Boutique, if that's even true. Regardless, this anniversary beer, now aged by Indie for two years...Pours a rich copper, with strong pink undertones. Nose of vanilla/oak barrel, strawberry and a little funk. Taste is lighter than I expected, grassy malts, fresh berries, mildly sweet with some light sock funk supporting. Very accessible, and refreshing yet funky.

7.6

Appearance - 8 | Aroma - 8 | Flavor - 6.5 | Texture - 8 | Overall - 8

Decent blonde pour, vague cloudiness, with white fluffy head that sticks around. Taste is slightly sweet grassy malt, with mild citrus running though, with a little resinous bitterness that lingers. Really quite good. Can from the brewery

7.5

Appearance - 8 | Aroma - 7 | Flavor - 7.5 | Texture - 8 | Overall - 7.5

Can from the brewery. Nice soft, mildly sweet, doughy malts. Some mild almost berry fruit esters. Pleasant.

6.5

Pours a nice amber. Taste is toasted biscuit with some medium syrup sweetness under, some almost.off flavour bitterness, with almost a touch of funk, which lingers. The overall balance is good, just the bitterness is a little too funky. Can from the brewery.

6.4

Appearance - 7 | Aroma - 5.5 | Flavor - 6 | Texture - 7 | Overall - 7

Can from the brewery. Very fruit forward, lots of sweet natural cherry flavour eclipsing the mild malt, with a barely-there sourness. Not bad, but really not much of a sour. It would have been better served with more of a sour bite.

7.9

Appearance - 7 | Aroma - 7 | Flavor - 8 | Texture - 8 | Overall - 9

Can from the brewery. Pours a blonde with a sheet of white head. Taste is smokey with biting oak, that mellows to vinous grape notes, and an ashy, edgy bitterness in the finish. Complex. There is alot going on here, but tasty and interesting. Worth the try.

6

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

Soooooo..... apparently KLB is back. Bit of a struggle categorizing this one. Clearly KLB is just a brand to be leveraged. It was for years owned by Amsterdam, who purchased the brewery back in 2003. Afterwhich Amsterdam would knock out some.of their classics. But then that stopped. But Amsterdam got bought in 2022 by Royal Unibrew, who apparently has decided to revive the brand. The result this beer. It's not great. It's only passingly hoppy, mostly some citrus, some mild bittering, a touch of resinous, but generally pretty moderate, all over a biscuit cereal malt base. The "easy drinking" in the commercial description is of course a huge red flag. Give this one a pass. Draft from the Fox and John, Bloor West Village, Toronto