By: Beau’s All Natural Brewing Company
Ontario, Canada
Style: Herbed / Spiced Beer (Gruit), 6.60% ABV
What? That's not an IPA!
A bottle from a January 2012 batch that I’ve been saving in the back of the fridge since then. I’ve had this on tap before and it was really different so I wanted to try it again! They use bog myrtle in the brew with a Belgian double malt/yeast profile according to the little tag that came with the bottle.
A: It’s almost the color of cola. Kinda brown-toffee coloured with a hint of dark ruby red. The head takes off to the sides of the glass pretty quickly.
S: It’s very sweet smelling, but not in the normal malt way. It’s more like a root beer kind of smell. It’s got that spicy, herby smell that a really nice root beer would have. I guess that makes sense… it is bog beer.
T: I love the taste of this beer. It’s refreshingly different. It opens with a little yeast sour, followed by that weird bog taste – a combination of dry tea, root/birch beer, and some spiciness – it then gets into a more standard double taste, nice round, warm malts. There is a distinct vanilla flavour somewhere in there too. The bitter is also different, maybe more like the bitterness of almonds than the bitterness of hops? It’s great, though I’d love a little more in the body department.
M: For something as dark as this, it is surprisingly light. Very light carbonation, almost like the bottom of a cola bottle. It’s not under-carbonated though. It’d be nice to have on cask for sure! It’s warm from the alcohol at the end.
O: I’m going by style here, and in the spiced/herb beer category this is really a great beer. It’s interesting, refreshing, and something I really enjoy drinking. That kind of cola, root/birch beer taste combined with the nice malts and the sour yeast is a great combination. I’d actually buy six packs of this if it was a year-round option.
