THE CALIFORNIA-BASED ENGLISH ALE

You never know where a new microbrewery’s gonna turn up. The other night at San Francisco’s Edinburgh Castle, a longtime Scottish pub of much renown, I pulled the trigger on an ale I’d never heard of before called BLACK PRINCE PORTER, as I was in a dark/black drinkin’ kind of mood. Thinking it to be an English Ale, from the country known as England, I ingested accordingly – only to find a few days later that all that thought that went into imagining drinking this at a small pub in the Costwolds was for naught. It’s actually from Marina, California’s ENGLISH ALES BREWERY, just down the coast from me right near Monterey. That part of Monterey county is strange and depressing to me – windswept, foggy, filled with retired military personnel and low-rent chain stores; but then again, there’s a quality brewery in Marina, so that’s something. I enjoyed my Black Prince Porter – a little watery perhaps, but redolent of classic porter flavors & very much like something you’d really get when bellying up to the bar in the UK. It was lacking any sort of heavy carbonation & that’s just what I expected – thin, medium-flavored, medium-malted & all around fairly good. I gave it a 6/10 and that’s enough to give me the gumption to try another English Ale in the near future.