Beer Review: Troegs Hopback Amber

Troegs, a brewery out of Pennsylvania, makes some of the best "value" beers out there and Hopback Amber is really the centerpiece of their line of great beers. For some context, this is an "American Amber Ale" but it really tastes like a malt-forward IPA. I'll talk more about that in a second.

This beer pours a medium amber color with a thin head that turns into just a filament shortly after and sits on top for a while. Great looking beer!

The smell is all malt; thick caramel, bready notes dominate here with no real variation to speak of. The smell is pleasant, for sure, but nothing blows you away.

The taste is far more complex than the nose; on the tip of your tongue you get the taste of sweet malts that the nose prepared you for. There's some citrus flavors through the middle of the sip and then a big bite of hops on the back end. I'm not talking about some generic amber ale hop content, this beer's hop flavor is (as I alluded to before) much more like an IPA than anything. Very pleasing taste in every aspect; especially in the boldness of the flavors.

This beer has, I would say, below average carbonation in terms of amount of carbonation. This works well with the caramel flavor which might have been masked by the carbonation bite. Not a particularly heavy beer on the palate but feels reasonably substantial because of the bready malt presence.

At $8.99 + tax, this beer is a bargain for the taste you get. Even people adverse to hop bitterness, I think, will find this beer tasty by virtue of the blast of caramel malt you get when you first taste this beers

Score: A  4.25/5