Otter Creek Copper Ale

I tried another beer from the Otter Creek Brewery in Middlebury Vermont last night. They are also the makers of the exceptionally tasty Wolaver's Organic IPA. Apparently Wolaver’s is Otter Creek’s brand for the organic beers they make. The one Felecia and I have in the frig is called Copper Ale. The flavor is predictably malty and sweet at the beginning but the nose has an unusual but pleasant sourness. This is a relatively bitter beer that’s a little lighter and more hopped than most red ales I’ve tasted. I’m still perplexed about whether red, amber, and copper ales refer to any single beer style. They seem inconsistently applied. Obviously Scottish red ale is different than American amber ale but I think that some labels are interchangeable and are marketing methods rather than accurate designations that say something precise about the style.

Otter Creek Copper Ale is a fine beer, but it doesn’t compare in quality to Wolaver’s Orgainic IPA, which is what led me to buy it instead of a local micro at the Plaid Pantry last night. If I were shopping for a good red I would probably buy Widmer’s Drop Top or Deschutes’ Cinder Cone Red over Otter Creek in the future. Vermont is a long trip from Portland, and I wonder if freshness is a significant factor in my assessment. The beer I tried was bottled on March 27, about a month and a half ago. Is that a time span that might effect the flavor of a beer without preservatives or pasturization?

I don’t see many East Coast micros at the store and I’m happy to know people are enjoying craft beers in Vermont too. It seems like Vermont is an ideological brother to the progressive parts of Oregon, but separated by nearly 3,000 miles, a desert, three mountain ranges, grasslands, rednecks, rabid suburbanites, and a couple turnpikes. That’s my derogatory condensation of it all at least. Here we are on either side of a vast conservative continent, drinking craft beer, making hay-bale houses, and marrying gay people to their pet iguanas. I salute you, Otter Creek Brewing, and you Birkenstock-wearing neo-hippies sipping fine ales in far off Vermont. You are our eastern brethren.