After my let down at Fremont, I wasn’t expecting to find anywhere that overall had a good selection of beer. I stumbled upon Hale’s Ales while driving through town on Labor Day and finding most of the breweries closed. This place had reasonably priced food and the beers here were good across the board. This one was a great find.

The Mongoose IPA had a very nice hop nose and very good balanced flavors. Its partner, Supergoose, had a good hop nose also but had lots of citrus. The Supergoose was also well balanced even though the hops gave it lots of lemon flavors.

Guapo’s Saison Sour was a good saison but didn’t really come across as a sour. The nose had a slight underlying scent like fermenting fruit. However, it still was predominantly the herbal nose of a saison. That underlying fermenting fruit was still prevalent in the flavor giving it a bit of a hard cider like undertone. There wasn’t really much sour here.

New Trick had a very smoky nose and very smoky flavors up front but finished more like a brown with caramel flavors. I am not usually a fan of smoky beers, but this one was quite delightful.

Night Troll Porter had a very slight coffee nose and was very nutty in flavor up front. It was interesting but not really a full-on porter. This was kind of a nut brown porter, if there is such a thing. This was definitely not a traditional porter and had a slightly sweet finish.

I am definitely going to try to make it back to this brewery. The food was great too. It is in a neighborhood surrounded by several other breweries so I will have to make it part of a multi-stop tour next time. I just hope that next time I am up that way, everything is open.