Town Brewery Trove--Outside Jokes Pale Ale

All of the beers I purchased from Whitby’s Town Brewery came in attractive 473mL cans, but to my mind, the best looking one housed Outside Jokes Pale Ale—a blue, gold, and orange miasma of a cloudscape on the label really drew my eye.

Outside Jokes is a 5% pale ale. It’s an extremely hazy yellow gold offering with a fluffy white crown of suds. The beer has orange and grapefruit notes driving its aromatic profile, with some fresh lime acting as subtext. The flavour is less of a citrus medley and more of an alcoholized orange juice—it blends sweet, tart, and bitter in an agreeable but unremarkable fashion. The back end trends toward bitterness, but in a reserved manner.

Compared to Town Brewery’s IPA and DIPA offerings, Outside Joke fails to provide anything extra—rather, it’s a lower alcohol version of the boozier, hazy and juicy formats. That’s not to say it isn’t enjoyable—quite the contrary. I liked it a fair bit. I just found it to be a lower enthusiasm offering of the brewery’s burlier beers. But the flavour profile treads the same path as Finer Things IPA and Close Talker DIPA, and those two brews impressed me more.

Rating: 7.0 out of 10.