Brew Review - Laughing Lab

I'm getting back to my Colorado brews tonight with a selection from the Bristol Brewing Company of Colorado Springs, CO. This is their Scottish-style Laughing Lab ale. I'm shocked that I've never had a beer from the Bristol's prior to this. I suppose better late than never. This beer was freshly brewed just less than a month ago according to the notches on the label. It's nice to see a brewer date the beer so you can tell how long its been sitting on the shelf. Scottish ales tend to be a bit darker than amber beers and are supposedly a bit hoppier. This beer pours a lovely dark red / borderline brown out of the 12 oz bottle. There was a nice 1" off-white head that rose up in my pint glass that quickly dissipated into a thin lingering lace. I could see a light amount of carbonation in the glass as well.

I detected only a light hop smell. Bristol's used Willamette hops for the aroma and Chinook hops for the bittering in this beer. The maltiness didn't really come through until the initial tasting. This is a beer that could be called a session beer. It comes in at 5.3% ABV and a low 19 on the IBU scale. I expected a bit more bitterness for a Scottish ale but didn't receive much bitterness. The Chocolate and Caramel malts hit you a bit late in the tasting. The beer gives you a creamy affect when it first hits your mouth. Going down, there is just a hint of bitterness but not much. What I also got was a strange reaction in my mouth. After swallowing, my mouth immediately started salivating a lot. It quickly coated my tongue in saliva and gave the sense that your mouth was covered in water. It certainly doesn't taste watery going down but for some reason my tongue decided to take a bath and wash itself after I drank this beer. Interesting. Whatever dryness the beer had initially all but disappeared. Perhaps it was a reaction to the left over jelly beans from Easter I was eating just before opening this beer that caused this.

The hops and the malts hit you a split second after you drink it. Your mouth will feel a creaminess at first, then the malts and then the hops. After swallowing you then feel your taste buds watering up. I like this beer however and I would have no problem drinking a few of these at a sitting if given the chance. I drank this beer at cellar temperature and not cold from the fridge.

As with most session-like beers, the beer rating sites were pretty neutral on this ale. Ratebeer put this in the 57th percentile and a 3.15/5 rating. BeerAdvocate graded this between a "B" and a "B+". Just a few of the raters also detected the same mouth experience I did. Whenever I rate a beer, if I rank it at least a 3.0 or higher, then that tells me that I'd buy this beer again. I actually had one of these beers late last night after another beer but didn't want to rank it then. I decided to wait until tonight to give it a final ranking. The beer last night didn't give me that saliva effect, so perhaps it truely was a reaction to the jelly beans. Last nights beer was very good. Tonight's beer won't change my opinion. Bristol makes a very good beer. I'd be happy to offer this to my friends. I'll give this beer a 3.3 out of 5 rating.

Side note: Perhaps it's time to change up my ranking style a bit. I rarely, if ever use a score of 4.0 or higher and rarely if ever even approach a beer with a 2.0 or less. So I'm essentially wasting a lot of the ranking bandwidth. Perhaps for future beers I'll come up with a better method to score these beers. Beer ranking sites are only an average and everyone's experiences are different with given the same beer. Don't trust anyone else's ranking until you get a chance to try it for yourself.