I wandered alone in St. Charles, till I came upon 1st Street: Center Line by Alter Brewing Company

Echoes of the River Fox
With The Musical Box
Still playing on the stage
Alter Brewing makes an ale
And pours a big ol' glass
Neil Postman, casual viewing
Butt sitting on a bar stool

Back in May, I went down south to see The Musical Box perform a little magic and do their thing which was to perform a Genesis show just as they did back in 1974-75. This meant a performance of The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway with all of the costumes and slides and props and whatnot. Since I wrote about the concert here, I am instead going to pen a few words about a beer I had before the show.

Although I had been to St. Charles, IL to see many shows at the Arcada Theatre, I hadn't really explored the town and its beer offerings before. This time around I would do so. Google informed me that there were two brewpubs in town: Pollyanna Brewing and Alter Brewing. While it would be wrong to say that their beer menus were interchangeable, they both had IPAs aplenty along and a shortage of rauchbiers, rye pilsners, dunkels, or any other style which would have tilted the scales one way or the other. However, Alter did have something that Pollyanna didn't: a food menu.

With things being more or less equal to my tastes on the beer front, I chose the one-stop shopping of Alter for my gustatory needs.

The tasting room/restaurant had that same gussied up industrial vibe that most taprooms do these days. I have to wonder if there is a single company that designs these spaces for 99% of the brewpubs out there.

Neutral colors?

Check.

Lots of exposed duct work?

Check.

And so on.

Alter's space in St. Charles isn't horrible by any means. Just a bit generic, for my discriminating taste in interior drinking spaces. Or maybe I am simply fussy.

On the other hand, my salad was tasty and the beer of such a quality as to compel me to stop at a Binny's on the way out of town to bring for quaffing at home. Both the amber and golden ales were impressive but only the latter, Center Line, was available at the store. Would my quite favorable impression at the taproom hold up upon a second tasting?

My phone is a cheapie so it takes a while before I can get a decent, in focus photograph. Often times this means the head has dissipated to one degree or another as is the case here. There was originally more of the lovely white foam when I poured the beer but some of it had gone by the time I got my camera app working. The beer itself was a gorgeous yellow hue with a bit of haze but not enough to obscure the bubbles inside heading upwards. My nose caught some cracker, a hint of grass, and a faint fruitiness of the tropical variety.

The first sip offered a nice fizziness to complement the beer's medium-light body. The grain taste was like a biscuit, a bit heavier than the aroma had let on. Some grassy tasting hops added balance while presumably another hop variety gave a touch of tropical fruitiness to the proceedings. On the swallow, the biscuit taste went away while the fruity hop flavor came to fore a bit allowing pineapple to emerge from the previously more nebulous tropical taste. Bitterness and dryness were on the low side. Just enough to wash away the sweeter flavors.

My home tasting confirmed the impressions I got at the brewery. As golden ales go, Center Line was a bit heavier than most. Most examples of the style are rather light-bodied and go easy on the grain and hop flavors. Here the body is a touch heavier and so the grain flavor is a bit stronger than I expected but it was quite welcome. This still an easy drinking beer, however, with nothing that overpowers. I thought the brewers struck a very nice balance between malt and hop tastes and I really liked how that pineapple comes in at the end. Again, it's not a big, bold tropical fruit taste but a really nice accent.

Alter took the normal golden ale template and boosted it up to, not 11, but more like 4. There's just a bit more of everything you'd expect from the style. Center Line went well with my meal and fit the bill on a warm day. This is an excellent brew.

Junk food pairing: As Center Line has a little more oomph to it than your normal golden ale, it can handle something beyond a basic chip. Pair it with a big bag of those Funyun flavored potato chips for maximum satisfaction.