Salmon Fly Honey Rye - Madison River Brewing Company

    Salmon Fly Honey Rye is a Rye Beer created by Madison River Brewing Company which is located in Belgrade, Montana. I received this beer as part of my craft brew club.

    The Rye Beer pours a pale straw color with almost no head to speak of. I really expected this beer to be darker colored, and the lack of head makes me worry about the beer's body.

    The beer smells very sweet. There are notes of honey perceptible as well as bready malts, the peppery spice of rye, and some fruity notes from the hops. Strangely enough, instead of the normal citrus/pine scent of hops, this beer smells almost like apples.

    Salmon Fly Honey Rye is thin bodied with a very low level of carbonation. With an alcohol content of 5.6% ABV, no alcohol characteristics are present.

    Madison River's Rye Beer tastes much like it smells. Toasted bread malt flavors intermingle with the honey's sweetness. There is only the slightest bit of hops flavor to the beer, and only as a finish to the spicy and sweet notes put forth by the beer. Overall the flavors are very light. The beer tastes slightly watery due to the flavor's subtlety. Just as I thought I could smell apple in the beer, I also taste it a little bit in the beer's aftertaste.

    It is a goal of mine to one day be somewhere that I can regularly fish for salmonids. Unfortunately with my current skill level in fly fishing I would likely do a much better job of catching trees and unfortunate fellow fishermen. I'm starting to wonder, however, if I might be able to catch a few fish by pouring some of this beer into their natural habitat. As we all know, beer makes people stupid. If this is also true for fish, more than likely one is going to look at his friends a be like "hey dude, watch this!" right before he swims at me full speed. Of course with his  (because obviously only a male would show off like this) slowed reaction times I could easily snatch the fish out of the water as he attempted to tease me in front of his friends. Some might say that this would be unfair to the fish. I just say that it's using my resources!

    Salmon Fly Honey Rye is not really a beer that I would choose to drink regularly. There was nothing unpleasant about the beer, but there also wasn't anything that stood out. I would really rather have a beer which put flavor first a little bit more and came off as less watery. Still, if Salmon Fly is all that's on tap, it's still going to be way better than those...other beers.

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