Helios Pale Ale - Upland Brewing Company

    Helios Pale Ale is an American Pale Ale brewed by Bloomington, Indiana's own Upland Brewing Company.

    Helios pours a hazy straw color with a small, off-white head with decent retention. The beer appears quite active with hundreds of bubbles that stay around for a good, long time.

    The ale has a nice, floral hops aroma with a little bit of the sweet, bready malts coming through.

    The Pale Ale has a medium-to-light mouthfeel with a moderate level of carbonation. It goes down very easily and would be quite refreshing on a hot day. Helios has a light alcohol content at 4.9% ABV.

    Helios's flavor is nice and summery with floral hops flavors and a slight bitterness. The malts keep this bitterness from becoming unpleasant with their toasted-bread like flavor and sweetness. When compared with the ale's scent, the flavors seem to be lighter than you would have expected. This almost watered-down character of the flavor really makes me wish the beer tasted as strongly as it smells, especially since the aroma has such nice floral notes.

Forward! We must bring light beer to the darkness!

    Helios was the personification of the sun in ancient Greek mythology. He would ride his fiery chariot across the sky, pushing back darkness as he went. The tagline Deus Sol Invictus (basically, "Sun God Undefeated") seems to suggest that Helios was quite strong. If the sun god was as weak as this beer's flavor however, I'm glad that he only had to fight darkness. I mean, how hard is it to chase away darkness if you're made of pure light? Basically you would just walk up to the darkness and it would go away. A child with a flashlight could do just as good of a job. Maybe Helios was undefeated because he never fought anything that actually posed a challenge?

    Even though I'm disappointed in Helios's lighter-than-it-should-be flavor, I still think that it would be a refreshing drink if you were sitting outside on a hot day. I could see the ale being a great "lawnmower beer", but it's not something I would choose to drink otherwise. Maybe Upland should have chosen a less wimpy figure from mythology (like Hercules perhaps?) for their beer...

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