Birthday Haul

This is somewhat of a belated post, as last month the Beer Rovette gave me four beers for my birthday, Chimay's Tripel, The Lost Abbey's Serpent's Stout, The Bruery's Orchard White and Alesmith's X, an extra pale ale. We shared the first of these the other night, Alesmith's X. This is a drinkable, floral pale ale. It has a nice hop flavor, but it's not dominated by hops like so many San Diego beers, in fact I thought the beer was less hoppy than Sierra Nevada's Pale Ale and Stone's Pale Ale, my benchmarks for the American pale ale style. X is an everyday beer that goes well with food. Living in San Diego, near Alesmith, it is not hard for me to find X, and as I drank it I realized that I don't choose this beer enough when I pop over to the store to get an enjoyable, non-mind numbing beer to go with a mid-week dinner. X is not a "wow" beer, but it won't let you down, either.