Red Hook is Washington's oldest craft brewery and is one of the oldest in the nation. Founded in 1981, they are one of very few breweries that actually advertise their beer, or at least on a major scale. Most recently I have been seeing their ads on the Pandora sidebar. Their flagship beer is their ESB and that's what we're drinking today.
This style is very English in it's character; brown and malty and in this case hop balanced. Red hook gets crap sometimes from people who are snobby about the more "experimental" breweries.They expect everybody to make beer with exotic ingredients or ridiculous amounts of hops or barrel age them, but that's not for everyone. Don't get me wrong, I love all those things, but you can't drink a lot of beer like that, and it costs $10+ a bottle. Red Hook makes good "every-day" drinking beer, they are not the best, but they are not horrible.
This beer came in a large 759mL bottle, but also comes in 12oz six-pack. It's a 5.8% ABV and bottled on May 11th 2011, so still very nice and fresh. I poured it into my brand new "nonic" pint glass. It looked good, amber in color with a very tall head that I just love to make it sit above the rim of the glass. The aroma was crisp but nothing too memorable. I'm not sure what the distention should be in this from like a brow ale or an amber though. It was maybe a little bitter, but well balanced. I really like the beer though.
Would I buy it again: Yes, I would like to try it on draught
Would I recommend to a friend: Yes
What would I do different: Try it draught
What would I do different: Try it draught
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