Left Field Brewery: So how’s the beer?

Yesterday on blogTO I wrote about the city’s newest craft brewery, Left Field Brewery. The piece was mainly an interview with the company’s founders, Mark and his wife Mandie. It originally included some supplemental tasting notes on the sample beer they were nice enough to bring me but, due to the length of the piece, that stuff got cut.

I don’t have a ton to say that wasn’t covered over on blogTO, but their beer was tasty and some of the more negative comments on blogTO (shocking!) were along the lines of “Well what does their beer taste like?” so I thought it was worth a post here, too.

In short: It’s good.

I only had one of their three beers they’ll be releasing shortly and, for the record, those include the cheekily named 6-4-3 double IPA and an American Pale named after a man whose record-breaking homerun streak in 1961 will forever come with a disclaimer, Maris*–which is aptly brewed using Maris Otter Malt (the ever-so-important asterisk was also edited away from the submission I made to blogTO. Shame.)

The beer I sampled was the Eephus Oatmeal Brown Ale and if it’s an indication of things to come from Mark and Mandie Murphy, the city’s beer fans are in for a treat.

My overall impression of this beer is that it manages a great balance of being rich-tasting and complex but incredibly smooth. Pouring from the bottle they supplied me with, the aroma is all roasted malts with just a hint of something sweet like currant or brown sugar. All those notes are evident in the flavour too, but the roasted malt flavour isn’t overwhelming and instead the beer manages to taste clean and crisp–an impression aided by just the slightest bit of bitterness in the finish.

The look of the beer is also great. It’s got some thin taupe head but retains good lacing throughout and it’s quite simply a gorgeous colour. It’s a rich, deep mahogany and I commented on the colour enough while drinking it that my wife started to make fun of me.

As I noted on blogTO, the Eephus is a rare pitch designed to catch batters off guard and I think it’s safe to say this Oatmeal Brown Ale, a rarity on the Ontario beer scene, might likewise catch some people off guard. Sure, it’s just one beer, but here’s hoping Left Field Brewing’s other beers are this good because this one is–wait for it–a homerun.