Ballast Point Yellowtail Pale Ale & Calico Amber

Ballast Point is a San Diego brewery that grew out of a home brewing store, and the results occasionally show. This is not a bad thing. There’s a pleasant experimental edge to Ballast Point beers, but it’s accompanied by an occasional lack of depth and follow-through.

Ballast Point Yellowtail Pale Ale is a pale so pale it’s essentially a lager. The only hops you taste are in the first couple of sips. This is evidently by design: the Ballast Point brewers intend to create a Kolsch-style beer, which, we learn from their website, means that it’s a pale brewed like a lager. The result is clean, refreshing, and only barely a pale ale. By the third sip, all distinctiveness disappears, and the whole thing starts tasting remarkably like Miller Genuine Draft. I happen to like Miller Genuine Draft, so this is not necessarily a slam. But it’s the wallflower of pale ales, standing at the side of the dance, hoping you don’t notice it enough to ask it out. Very redrinkable, but doesn’t convince you to stick around.

The same light touch that doesn’t quite work in the Yellowtail works like a charm in the Ballast Point Calico Amber Ale. Full disclosure: I am not an amber fan. In fact, most of the ambers I have tasted are so cloyingly sweet that I have sworn off them as a matter of principle. Foremost among these ptui beers is Alaskan Amber, a beer so sweet and vile it deserves its own circle of hell. But the Calico surprised me with its less aggressive sweetness. It is clearly an amber, but the taste is not accumulative. You know how you sip some beers, and the first sip is good, the second sip you realize you’ve made a horrible mistake, and the third sip makes you want to pitch the whole thing under the table and hope the server passes by soon? This is not one of those. It’s crisp and distinctive. The taste is sharp on the tongue but quickly excuses itself and leaves without you wanting to scrub your mouth with an emery board. A solid choice for amber fans, and a good choice for non-amber drinkers to dip their toe in the water.

Ballast Point Yellowtail Pale Ale: C+
Ballast Point Calico Amber Ale: B

Sampled at: La Grande Orange, Santa Monica CA.

Slàinte.