The Star Trek Golden Anniversary Ale is the latest in the Federation of Beers line of Star Trek-themed releases, and an obvious ode to the 50th anniversary of the original series, happening later this summer.  Brewed by Garrison for the Canadian market, and Shmaltz for the American, I believe.

This 341ml bottle pours a clear, bright medium golden yellow colour, with two fat fingers of puffy, loosely foamy, and bubbly off-white head, which leaves a bit of broken sudsy chainlink lace around the glass as it slowly and evenly subsides.

It smells of grainy and bready pale malt, some weak mixed fruity notes (apples and oranges, literally), maybe a hint of earthy yeast, and plain leafy, weedy, and floral noble hop bitters. The taste is semi-sweet, bready and doughy pale malt, a still muddled table-top fruit bowl thing, subtle yeast, maybe a suggestion of sulphur, and more gentle leafy, floral, and dead grassy hoppiness.  The carbonation is quite low-key in its servile frothiness, the body a decent middleweight, and actually fairly smooth, with a nice airy creaminess arising as things warm up a tad. It finishes well off-dry, the generic grainy malt having made peace with itself.

Overall, this comes across as a generally well-made blonde (ok, ‘golden’) ale, simple, and with no obvious flaws, which, frankly, puts it way ahead of its brethren in the style out there, everywhere. Since it was obviously made with a focus on something non-beer in origin, and thus needs to appeal to the masses, I do believe that they’ve succeeded here – now beam me up already!