Crafty Loki - Wacken Brewery

Crafty Loki
Nordic Pale Ale
Wacken Brewery

0,33l
5,7%
IBU: 40

I stumbled across this when I recently ordered something from a shop and as I had to pay shipping anyways, I added 2 brews. Wacken is mainly known for the huge festival happening there and I had no idea there is a brewery... maybe they just use the name.. anyways. It seems that Wacken Brewery (German only) has a series they call Beer of the Gods and I chose to sample their Crafty Loki which they call a 'Nordic Pale Ale'. I am not sure about the Nordic part besides maybe the Loki name but hey.. it's a Pale Ale and me likey them usually so.

Like most of the beerses with a fancy name, this also has flashy labels. The front one shows us an old depiction of Loki the Trickster in his glory, the name of the brew and a text calling it something like 'a top-cool, top-creative, top fermented  beer'.

The back label holds some text about Loki and why the beer holds as many facets as the trickster God himself yada yada... let's give a personal relationship to it so we will like it more and buy more of it... I guess marketing is part of everything but I like my beers to have good taste not a good story, unless they have both but we will get to that.

RateBeer at this point does not have any scores for it, lacking enough ratings for it now.

I'm back to one of my standard trusty tasting glasses just because I can and didn't want to use the Widmer one again.

Loadsa bubbles, very nice. Full head with very fine bubbles. As it is 36° Celsius outside I didn't want to wait till it dissipated so the pic has a bit much foam. It's a golden, unfiltered brew with slight red hues.

The aroma is very fruity. Fresh berries with fresh cut grass and faint fruity hops and lemon zest. It's basically ones good ole IPA aroma but a lot sweeter.

The carbonation is a tad bit overpowering, the hoppish goodness is semi muffled by some weird musky tones but they vanish fast and give place to fruity, flowery aspects mixed with very faint medicinal tones. The awesomeness of this brew comes from the aftertaste which perfectly masters to blend the IPAness with what I would call the dry hoppish aspects of a crisp good German Pilsner.

This is unlike any pale ale I have had before and though there are some minus aspects, all in all, I really like it. I was skeptical about this I have to admit but now I want to try more of their brews!

Prost!

DMW