Bitch Creek ESB is our first beer from Grand Teton Brewing Company in Victor, ID.Bitch Creek pours a murky, rusty bucket brown; it may be a bit dark and murky for an ESB, but who are we to judge? The light brown head is pretty minimal, and the nose is a bready and sweet malt that smells like you’d expect it to be chewy. It opens with a sweet biscuity malt front—a baked good of some sort—before moving into roasted and chocolate flavors in the middle and ending sweet with some dry malt notes—both of which linger. There is no fruitiness or discernable hop presence. Bitch Creek has a medium body with a medium carbonation bite. Overall, the lack of a discernable hop presence is a problem, as is the darker malt profile, especially in the middle with the roasted and chocolate flavors. Hops would help the beer
end better; there would be less lingering sweetness, and the middle would have some bitter bite. Ultimately, this tastes more like a brown ale (specifically a British-style brown ale) than an ESB. It seems like they pretty much missed the mark here; unless we got some random skanky bottle, Bitch Creek ESB seems to be trading on their “edgy” name to attract the tourist dollars. Seriously, an ESB with no hop presence?From the Grand Teton website: “Bitch Creek perfectly balances big malt sweetness and robust hop flavor for a full bodied, satisfying mahogany ale. Like the stream for which it is named, our Bitch Creek ESB is full of character...not for the timid.”
Does that full bodied creek take a vacation during the summer? Because the hops in our bottle were incognito...
ABV: 6.5%
IBU: 54
OG: 1.062
Malts: Idaho 2-Row Pale, German Melanoidin, CaraAmber, CaraAroma & CaraMunich
Hops: Galena, Chinook, Centennial, & dry hopped with Centennial
(12/14/2009)
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