Dock of the Bay: Long Beach, CA

 Stopping in for a few pints at the Belmont Brewing Company. 

You gotta love this place if only for it's ocean side location.  It provides a nice view while sucking down beers.  

It's a little more spendy then some places, but not prohibitively so.  One can still stop in for some decent eats and a couple of beers and not be squinting at the bill hoping to the gods that total is really a phone number.

That being said, nothing all that staggeringly exiting in the beer department.  Not bad, not by any means, but nothing that really sets it apart... except for the view.

And onto said beer:

Strawberry Blonde: As anticipated, this fruit beer had a pretty heavy strawberry aroma.  The beer itself is quite sweet and the strawberry flavor is very pronounced. Basically the proverbial 'beer for people who don't like beer'.  But for what it is, not bad.

Pale ale: Pretty heavy citrus hop aroma.  It is very heavy on the hops without a lot if malt to back it up so it at first taste it's more like a lighter IPA then a pale. 

Marathon Blonde: No aroma that I could detect.  Light, sweet... light ... ... that's about it. I could detect some faint fruity flavors in there but otherwise not much complexity to speak of.

Top Sail: Nice, warm toasted aroma.  Slight roasted grain character with just a touch of bitterness in the back for a simple but rather nice amber ale.

Long Beach Crude:  No real aroma to speak of again.  Full bodied unsweetened chocolate.  With a slight herbal licorice quality.   Dry finish.  Very nice dry stout 

Just for the Helg of it IPA:  This IPA is brewed with a rather novel hop from Western Australia known as the Helga hops.  The aroma seems pretty familiar, citrusy, slightly spicy and floral.  In the flavor, the hop character is tempered nicely so there a ton of flavor without a lot of bitter.  Drinkable but pack full of citrusy floral flavor.  One of the better IPA's I have had for the sheer amount of hop flavor they managed to pack in while still making it palatable.