20 August 2017 - Best Beer HQ
Goose Island Green Line Pale Ale Review
I ordered a pint of Goose Island Brewery’s Green Line Pale Ale at a pub in Houston, Texas, but as I found out later, this beer comes all the way from Chicago, Illinois. That’s a distance of 1,082 miles – a 16-hour drive – according to Google.
Here’s hoping this is a fresh batch, because my US holiday is too short to drink stale beer.
ABV: 5.4%
IBU: 30
Blurb about the beer: Green Line Pale Ale is a honey-coloured, immensely sessionable American pale ale with a pronounced, bright, American hop aroma and citrus flavour. Notes of biscuit and lightly toasted malt create the backbone for Green Line’s pleasant, crisp bitterness.
Goose Island Brewery: Goose Island Brewery is a brewery in Chicago, Illinois, that began as a single brewpub opened in 1988 in Lincoln Park, Chicago, and named after a nearby island.
According to an online article by the Chicago Tribune, Goose Island has a national distribution deal for its Green Line Pale Ale (hence why I was able to get it in Houston) that sees the bulk of this beer made at an Anheuser-Busch plant in Baldwinsville, New York.
Taste test: I can see why Goose Island would make a deal to distribute this nationally, as it looks, tastes, smells like a crowd pleaser.
I certainly enjoyed it. It pours honey-gold, with a white one-finger head and a fresh aroma of pine. To the taste, it has a malt biscuit base, complemented by light citrus (mostly lime), medium bitterness, and mellow carbonation.
The verdict: Although hardly earth shattering, Goose Island’s Green Line Pale Ale is a decently good pale ale for beer snobs and noobs alike.
Beer/movie combination: I tried to think of a movie that, like this beer, was decently good, but not overly memorable and earth shattering, and realised that could adequately describe most of Marvel’s recent slew of comic books movies.
For instance, I enjoyed Doctor Strange when it came out last year, but for the life of me I couldn’t tell you much about it now, except that the effects were great, and that actor Eggs Benedict Cumberbatch was above average in the role.