Tasting Notes - Vic July 2007 Swap

[AUHEAMIC]

DFT Smoke Ale

Strait from the shed into the glass which I think is at about 10deg c. Great temp for this beer. Poured with a good head which didnt get a chance to die down as it was so easy to drink. I slowed down on the second glass. Subtle smoky flavour which was not overpowering and was well balanced with the other flavours. Veryy nice beer DFT.

I couldnt Find your recipe DFT (maybe I didnt look hard enough). Could you PM it to me please.

 

[Wardhog]

APD's Brown Ale

Gee I'm glad I didn't put the brown ale in. This easily kills it.

Pours with a nice thick head that dissipates quickly, and a hazy brown body.

The malts in here are far from boring and one-dimensional like mine was. Lots of lovely toffee/caramel flavours, and a fair smack of chocolate malt.

Nothing really stands out in the nose, and the malts take centre stage from the earthy hop flavour. However, there's plenty of bitter there, but not too much.

A highly enjoyable brew, apd.

 

[Fents]

3. Lucas - Batz Altbier - labeled "alt" on caps + dodgy masking tape label - ready to drink

Apperance - Deep Roasted Ale Brown! Didnt pour a great head but im 98% sure that its this friggin dodgy crackenback pale ale glass next half of the bottle goes in a real glass.

Aroma - Malt smack bang on the nose with a hint of flowers afterwards, smells like its gonna taste.

Tatste - Yep it does what it says it does on the box! :beerbang: Beautifull full roasted malt flavour then smash, did someone say bitter ? needs more bitter! no wait leave it, absolutley beautifull!

Great beer, heavy but not too heavy shout out to Batz for Lucas's inspiration. :chug:

 

[DarkFaerytale]

andrei picked up his case last night so no doubt we will hear from him on here soon. once again i forgot to bring my notebook in to work, i really need to get the net at home

sorry my house smelt so bad last night andrei that forbidden fruit yeast stinks and it's to dam cold to keep windows and doors open.... you probably didn't notice after being savagly mauled by my dog tho *lol*

-Phill

 

[apd]

Mark's Amarillo Amber
Great stuff. S***s me that someone can make a beer this good with a kit and extract and I fall way below the mark with an all grain brew. Inspires my to try new things and get down off my AG soapbox.

Anyway - great hop aroma and malty flavours. I get no extract twang. Love the colour. Head a little lacking from the start. Thumbs up from Mrs APD as well. She's an amarillo lover through and through.

Andrei's Irish Dry Stout
Drank too soon - apologies Andrei. Missed the message about keeping it for later. Nice nonetheless. Great tan-coloured head. Very toasty (or was it roasty) flavours. Too thin in body for my taste but that's just being picky.

 

[Wardhog]

Peels' Cream Ale

Dangerous, dangerous beer.

What's the ABV on this one? I hope it's low, or it could be the cause of a disaster quite easily - matrimonial disharmony ahoy "Honest love, I didn't mean to get shitfaced, I didn't feel like I should be drunk 'cos the beer was so easygoing."

Pours well (you gotta tell me how you prime your bottles, they're always good) - thick white head and palepalepale body.
No hop aroma or flavour to speak of, a detectable level of bitterness, but that's about it. No real malty flavours, just clean crisp cleancrispyness..

This is a session beer if ever I've seen one. If you have enough of this on hand for your sessions, you're doing it in style.

A great beer, hard to believe it's an ale.

 

[DarkFaerytale]

remembered the note pad today

Robw Robust Porter

i probably should of left this till later but god dam it i wanted to drink a porter
nice light brown head which lasted the glass, very dark brown almost black color.

light aroma of dark malts and a hint of something metallic.

very creamy taste with a lovely toastiness at the end that lasts and is in no way overdone

beautifully constructed beer

half wit
in my haste i didn't chill this beer down enough befor i drank it

hazy off golden color, perhaps a touch dark for a wit

the aroma was pretty amazing deffinatly could smell the lime and chamomil with the flavour being pretty much the same as the aroma.

great mouthfeel but with a strange taste at the end, i couldn't pick what it was and because of that i was left wanting more to try figure it out, very interesting

overall it was a good beer, it might have put me off using chamomile in a wit but it was deffinatly interesting

Peels Cream Ale

nice half inch head that lasted the glass with a beautifull clear color

no notacable aroma and a light malt flavour

great mouthfeel and carbonation was spot on

very quaffable and would be a great beer to turn people onto homebrew. my old man has ordered me to make more of this beer

perfect representaion of the style

Velophile APA

nice tan color with low tight head, slight amarillo/passionfruity aroma. notacable malt backbone with slight bitterness, very drinkable with a good amount of carbonation. the head had depleated by the end of the glass but is more likely the glass and not the beer. another beer i could just kept drinking.

marks amarillo amber
nice half inch head with very clear brown color, it was nice to be able to pour a whole beer and not leave the dregs behind in the bottle. aroma was very amarillo/passionfruit and the taste was the same i was a little dissapointed with the lack of malt (but i love malt driven beers). the beer was bitter but not overly so, low carbonation and a slight metallic taste, this was a really good beer but i'd be quick to try something else, sorry mark

Lucas Altbier

nice looking beer with a very small compact head and a light amber color, malt aroma, light mouthfeel with nice malty taste and some slight choc at the end with a light bitterness that lingers, i found the beer slightly over carbed but i was left wanting more, good beer and i'm tempted to change the malt bill in the altbier i'm making soon to this one instead

-Phill

 

[andreic]

Andrei's Irish Dry Stout
Drank too soon - apologies Andrei. Missed the message about keeping it for later. Nice nonetheless. Great tan-coloured head. Very toasty (or was it roasty) flavours. Too thin in body for my taste but that's just being picky.

Thanks for the feedback apd... its all good. When I brewed this beer I had in mind a beer in the style of Guiness (which I very much enjoy drinking, especially when in Dublin). Guiness is to my mind a fairly light bodied beer for a stout so even though this was not to your taste I'm not too upset to hear it was thin in body. I am a fairly new AG brewer and a few things did not quite work out to plan with this brew... it had a much higher OG and FG (fg was 1.015) than originally planned. I also went for a very light carbonation and I think it might actually be a little too low... maybe that made it seem thinner in body than it might have been otherwise. Anyway, all feedback is good. I do think it will get a bit better with more time so I look forward to feedback from other tasters in the future.

I'm just enjoying my first beer from the case now (the half-wit) so I'll be adding my own tasting notes to the thread soon...

cheers,

Andrei

 

[andreic]

Thirsty Boy - Witbier. Labled Half Wit - Drink it NOW.

My first beer from the swap...

Popped the top and had a quick whiff - yep, its a wheaty... initially smelled some banana and bubblegum.

Poured into glass. A nice, light gold colour, slightly towards yellow but predominantly pale gold. Was slightly hazy but not cloudy. Had a nice, white, creamy looking head. Aroma was banana initially but then kind of perfumy? spicy?

It tasted good. Initially I thought I could taste a strong peppery / spicy finish to it. I thought I could taste an orange / mandarin type flavour as well.

It seemed towards the thin end in body (how I like most of my beers). The head dissipated by half way through the glass to not much. It left a little lacing on the glass, but not strong layers for every sip. I do think it might have benefited further from a little more carbonation. It was very easy drinking and I can imagine this going down an absolute treat on a summer afternoon. As I got towards the end I really started to notice a strong spicy/orangy flavour that I wish I could describe a bit better.

I really enjoyed this beer and am looking forward to having a crack at this style myself when it gets a bit warmer.Cheers to you Thirsy :beer:

Off to get the next taster from the fridge...

Andrei

 

[andreic]

14. mark_mulrooney - Amarillo amber ale - labelled, ready to drink

2nd taster... this is fun!

Twisted the cap - no pffft! What the?

Poured the beer. Had a real hard time getting a head, and what was there disappeared very quickly. My bottle seems to have a rather low level of carbonation. It is a deep amber/brown colour and quite clear (no haze).

I could smell the amarillo faintly in the beginning but the aroma moved to a more malty / caramel aroma half way through the glass (maybe due to the lack of carbonation).

The predominant tastes to me were malty / caramel, slightly fruity, with a nice bitter finish. The hop flavour was there, but for me didn't quite break through the malt, or maybe it competed a bit with the hop flavour from the kit. The body seemed medium to thick for me, a little filling.

If I try real hard I think I can taste a slight twang or slight lack of "freshness" but thats because you put "kit and extract" on the label and I went looking for it!

I'm not sure I got this beer in its prime due to the low carbonation. It certainly grew on me as the glass emptied and also brought back some fond memories of beers I made with the same kit (the Royal Oak Amber Ale is a cracker of a kit in my opinion).

Thanks for the beer Mark :beer:

cheers,

Andrei

 

[chris.peile]

Hey there - I have finally got around to starting the tastings - good stuff!

First cab off the rank.... Dark Faerytale - Smoke Ale

Appearance: Glowing golden colour, a nice 1cm head - it carbed up quite well
Aroma: Slight hop in the first smell, with a bit deeper digging I could really pick out the maltiness, and almost a slight sweetness to the smell - is there crystal malt in this? I couldn't pick up any smokiness in the aroma.
Taste: Clean and crisp alse - great taste. I could just taste a slight smokiness in the flavour - makes it really unique.

You could give this beer to someone without telling them about the 'smokiness' and I reckon about 1/2 the people would just think there is something 'different' about it and then pick up on the smoky flavour.

Great work on this one... I am keen to try something with 'smoke' in the future.

Cheers!!

 

[andreic]

3. Lucas - Batz Altbier - labeled "alt" on caps + dodgy masking tape label - ready to drink

Pours with an off-white head, a little creamy looking. Pale brown - deep copper colour. Very slight haze.

Aroma was a little malty, maybe even a bit nutty.

On tasting had a bit of a creamy feel to it. Really clean and crisp taste. Then the finish kicks in with a real drying sensation and strong bitterness. The body seems medium to me.

I really enjoyed this beer a lot. It was really clean and crisp and the dry bitter finish was awesome. It was quite refreshing. I'm not sure I've ever tasted an Alt before so this was a great introduction to the style. I will add this to the growing list of styles that I want to brew. I feel I will really need to try and locate a few commercial examples of the style to further my research on it now...

cheers for the beer Lucas

 

[andreic]

1. Peels - Cream ale - Labeled Cream Ale by Peels - Ready to drink

Pours with a slight head that disappears fairly quickly in my glass. Its really pale yellow in colour, slight hint of haze. Kind of looks like a pale lager.

Both aroma and taste had a real distinct character to them that I couldn't place until after the first glass - its corn! There's a hint of corn in the aroma and a lot of it in the taste. It has quite a clean taste, is fairly dry, and has a slight sweet corn flavour at the finish.

Its light to medium in body and is very easy drinking.

This is a very interesting beer - another first for me as I don't recall having a cream ale before. Its really easy to drink and is going down very well - I still have half a glass to polish off.

cheers for the beer Peels :beer:

 

[Wardhog]

RobW's Robust Porter

I've never really been a huge fan of stouts. I always pictured a robust porter just falling short of a stout.
Well, I have been educated.

This beer is f&^king beautiful. Pours into a thick brown head and deep deep red/brown almost opaque body.

It's the roast/black malts that I think I'm not too crazy about in stouts, as they overpower most everything else and leave a gritty feeling in your mouth. This is different. This has those malts in it to the tongue, but balanced in such a way as to avoid that gritty taste. Instead, you get a VERY malty beer, but one that's nicely sweet without being cloying. The hops don't stand out, they seem to be content in their role of offsetting the humungous malt flavours.

Sign me up to the fan club for this beer. Well done, Rob.

 

[Fents]

2. DarkFaerytale - Smoked Ale - ready to drink, goes good with just about any sort of meat - "S" on cap

Smoked ale, wouldnt have a clue what its meant to taste like. My impression before i opened the bottle was a big heavy dark ale (i.e i.p.a) with some smoked malt...

Also cause you said it was good with meat i had it with dinner. Oragnic Beef and Cornish (i.e vegetable) bangers and mash complete with onion gravy! :beerbang:

Apperance - Proven wrong from the get go. Beautifull golden looking ale colour, not a fantastic head but bubbles bouncing sideways off the glass.

Aroma - First up a hit of hops, was anticipating the smoke to come through much more but it was finally there.

Taste - Lovely hit of bittneress down the throat, then the hops, then finally the smoke to round it out. I thought it would be the other way round but its not either way its lovely! :chug:

edit-spelingg

 

[Thirsty Boy]

mark_mulrooney's - Amarillo amber ale

Tasted from a stemmed Stella glass at about 11C. Shared with my wife who has a much better palate than me.
This is a combination of our comments

Appearance

Beer poured a beautiful clear and bright light Mahogany colour, with a nice slightly off white head that lasted pretty well

Aroma

Big Pine and floral hops. Actually, I thought there must be another hop in there apart from Amarillo, I could certainly smell plenty of amarlillo, but I usually find it to be a little juicy and artificial smelling, but not in this beer. I would have thought there was some cascade or other "C" hop in there if the recipe didn't say otherwise.

Slightly sweet malt on the nose, with toffee and caramel. No esters to speak of.

Picked up a fair hint of a higher alcohol metho/solventy thing

Flavour

A medium to medium thin body with light but good carbonation. Quite a bit of the hop comes through in the flavour as well. The maltiness was toffee and caramel at medium low levels.

I found that I wasn't enjoying the way that the maltiness and the bitterness interacted. There was kind of a gap between them. Instead of them balancing; each one finished, then the other started.

There was a noticeable amount of twang to the beers malt profile, tasted like the kit was a bit old and thats what was on your tongue when the bitterness kicked in, and it pushed the beer out of balance.

There was also a cidery, slightly sour taste around the edges of your tongue in the aftertaste.

- - - - - - - - -

The beer has a bunch of good points, the colour and clarity and head were great and the hops were really nice. The malt was there and there strongly. But for some reason though, the way they meshed together wasn't doing it for my tastebuds. The couple of flavour faults weren't biggies and if the beer had lit up my mouth in other ways, they would have been minor sidenotes, but I couldn't get past them this time.

Sorry Mark but this one didn't do it for me.

Thirsty

edit: spelling and punctuation

 

[chris.peile]

Hey crew - a little off topic, but from reading all the notes being put up there is one very interesting common theme....

There are 2 big factors driving the outcome of tasting beer:
1. The expectation of the drinker of the beer, and
2. The beer itself!

It seems as if when people have an image/idea of what a beer will be like (i.e. stout or ale or wit), then if the beer is different then the outcome is that the beer is not what they expected, and thus they see what is 'wrong' (different) with it a bit more easily.

I suppose this provides a good hint to all those brewers out there from a marketing point of view, whether to friends or to potential buyers: Tell the punter what to expect!

Next time I have buddies over for beers I will try this theory on them - I might even brew a weird beer (maybe with chilli, or heavy smoke or something) and test whether people like it or dislike it based on their expectations... Other thoughts/comments?!

PS I will get back on topic tonight and post up another beer tasting!

Cheers,
Chris

 

[Fents]

MMMMMM you are correct. But i will say for myself personally, this is the FIRST case swap i've ever been involved in and really only the FIRST time i've tried different beers in a range like this...(been brewing for 3 years but have never brewd or brought anything other than an Ale or a Lager..)

So i have NFI how a wit or a heifweizen should taste and therefore can only assume on what i have read about the beer, therefore giving me an "expectation"

Def not the best system to be judging beers on but once i have a few swaps under my belt and tried "most" beers out there i'll have a better ideam about it all.

Edit - I also think its all just a matter of opion. My tatstebuds will never be the same as others, therefore you could brew the best porter in the world and i may still not like it (not likely tho )

 

[andreic]

2. DarkFaerytale - Smoked Ale - ready to drink, goes good with just about any sort of meat - "S" on cap

Pours a nice golden - light amber colour. Its fairly clear but not crystal clear - just a little hazy. White to maybe just off-white head. I had hard time getting a decent head in my glassware and it was all but gone rather quickly. I think my glasses are not the best for a proper tasting...

Theres quite a distinctive aroma there - I'm not really sure how to describe it - resin? I thought I got a hint of smoke in the aroma at one stage but it had a hard time getting past the main aroma.

The initial taste to me was some kind of hops, a little malt, then it quickly turns towards a smoky flavour at the end, with some bitterness and dryness, but not too much. Its a pretty easy drinking beer with a medium body to me. I could easily knock back a few of these, but I think the strong smoky flavour would rule it out for an extended session...

I enjoyed this beer which is another new taste experience for my palate. I did not have it with my dinner, but I think I can see why it would go "good with just about any sort of meat" - maybe I should have had his last night with my steak!

cheers DarkFaerytale :beer:

Andrei

 

[apd]

4. Wardhog Sloppy Skunk Fart APA - 'WAPA' on lid
Carbonation almost non-existent. I felt sure it would have had enough time to carb up but obviously not. It has been bloody cold and my storage is in the shed. Lesson learnt.

Nonetheless, the aroma and flavour of this brew battled against the odds and came through as winners. I though it was a bit nothing a few minutes out of the fridge but after warming up it was quite nice.

Not the sort of punch-in-the-face aroma of other APAs. Instead, it's subtle and smooth. Maybe it would have punched me in the face with higher carbonation.

Very nice

13. Mmmmm... beer - Dark Ale - Labelled 'Dark Ale - Belgian twist'
Pours a thin head on top of dark, clear ale with ruby highlights.

Much more malt aroma and flavour than hops and a big bitterness. I was drinking this by itself. I think I should have had it with something spicy.

Thumbs up from me.