Driftwood Brewery Naughty Hildegard “ESB”: Is a craft beer brewed in Victoria, BC at a strength of 6.5% with a whopping 73 IBUs hence why I put the ESB in quotations, basically if you are a style nut it’s pretty obvious this by no means a traditional ESB so don’t expect it to taste like a traditional Extra Special Bitter at all.
Aroma and Appearance: It pours a clear dark copper with one finger of foam and lots of very small bubbles. The aroma is peachy with mango, grapefruit, tangerine citrus and barely sneaking in there is some toffee.
Flavour: It is very hop forward and bitter, the noble bittering hops stand out in a resinous piney way while the mosaic fruity hops leave a grapefruit, peach and general citrus flavour that matches the aroma. I couldn’t detect any sort of malts at all.
Overall Impression: This is a hop head beer, I always like at least a bit of malts with my hops and those were kind of missing.
Rating: I give it a very good rating of 7/10, one I would recommend but will leave some on the shelves for all the hop heads out there.
Food Pairing: This is a good spicy food beer, look for a good spicy mango or peach salsa and grab some local Que Pasa tortilla chips to pair up with this beer.
This fits more of a West Coast ESB style of beer that I think we need, the colour is darker than the majority of IPAs while the flavour has way less malt than it’s British counterpart. This is a seasonal release, so be sure to grab one quick if you want one, this is one of their highest rated beers on ratebeer.
West Coast Beer Geek 