Golden Gaetz is this nascent Red Deer craft brewery’s ode to their city’s evolving downtown thoroughfare, with a style of brew that one might consider a gateway (no pun intended nor proffered) offering of sorts.

This 355ml can pours a clear, bright medium golden yellow colour, with two fingers of puffy, loosely foamy, and well bubbly bone-white head, which leaves a bit of randomly splattered sudsy lace around the glass as things quickly blow off.

It smells of bready, doughy, and slightly biscuity pale malt, a touch of underripe apple and pear fruitiness, faint indistinct earthy spice, and some decent leafy, weedy, and grassy hop bitters. The taste is gritty and crackery pale malt, a hint of biscuity and wheaten breakfast cereal, some ethereal Pils-like gasohol astringency, a suggestion of white pepper dust, and more zingy leafy, herbal, and wet grassy hoppiness.  The carbonation is good and active in its teasing and well-structured frothiness, the body on the light side of yer typical middleweight, and mostly smooth, just a general edginess extracting a minor tithe, as such. It finishes trending dry, the biscuity and crackery nature of the malt playing off of the lingering verdant hops.

Another winner from this central Alberta brewery, in the sense of smartening up a normally wan and under-served style. This one won’t make any big beer fans overly happy, but for the rest of us who can appreciate a regular strength brew with a lot more character than the average bear [sic], it very much works.