Bucking Bock by Rahr and Sons

Hello fellow craft beer drinkers, I hope life has been treating you well this early Spring.

With Spring, Texans have the coming of blue bonnets, the state flower, Texas Rangers and Houston Astros baseball to cover for the lack of post season hockey from the Dallas Stars, and thanks to the continuing tradition from the German settlers that populated the Republic of Texas in this nations infancy, seasonal bock beer offerings are hitting the store shelves. Already on Intoxico I have reviewed the Saint Arnold Brewery’s offering, and today I have the offering from Fort Worth’s own Rahr and Sons in their Bucking Bock.

Tipping a bottle of the brew into one of the many pint glasses I’ve collected going to their brewery tours, the lager shows its light golden hue, which while in the acceptable range for modern bocks, is lighter than traditional interpretation.  Fully poured, the beverage exhibits a decent half finger of head, clear body, and moderate carbonation.

There are not any other breweries that I can recognize by the nose of their brews, but the boys and girls must do something to every batch of their regular production line that gives the beer a “Rahr smell.” This “Rahr smell” is full of bread and yeast notes that, in this beer underscore a malty, light caramel forward nose, with almost no detectible hop presence.

A deluge of very sweet, light caramel syrup flavor opens on the palate on the initial quaff, with a nice bitter backend that subsides to nil by the third sip. Once the tongue acclimates to an almost cloying beginning, the beer’s sugariness pulls back, and acts as a compliment to a very unique “grain” like flavor profile.

Along with a slight sourness that helps quiet the malt forwardness of the beer, a nice grassy aftertaste adds a dry and refreshing complexity to Bucking Bock.

Not being the biggest maltose head, this beer took me about four servings (not all at once) to really develop an enjoyment of the beverage’s offerings. As long as you can hold on to the reigns without being thrown off, any drinker should be able to tame this malt bomb.

Prosit!