Casta Milenia Cerveza Ale

I like craft beer.

I like Mexican stuff (esp. food).

So, when I came across a Mexican craft beer tucked away on a bottom shelf at the local beer store, I had to try it out. Plus the bottle was really beautiful.

Milenia is an abbey-style ale, which of course can mean any number of flavor profiles. My first impression upon uncorking was of dark, ripe fruit, with surprisingly little yeast in the aroma. It poured a dark and cloudy amber, with very thin carbonation (aside from the cloudiness, it had the look of an English session beer.)

The flavor was a bit jarring--not because it was necessarily bad, but just radically different from what I expected based on the aroma. I had poured about half the bottle into an oversized brandy snifter--a great piece of glassware for tasting something for the first time, because you get a noseful before you take a sip. The best description I can come up with was figs and plumbs on the nose, but tannins and lime juice on the palate. Seriously--it tasted like tea.

What I really didn't like about it was the watery texture. It felt really thin and not at all like beer.

So I hesitate to give this beer a firm up or down. It might appeal to certain palates, and a good food pairing might make it better. I could maybe see it with a spicy, fairly rich seafood dish like one might get in coastal NW Mexico. And in fact, what we had with it was grilled shrimp salad with a more-or-less Thai twist on it, and as the beer warmed, the flavors started to work pretty well. But I just don't see it working standing alone.