Avery Anniversary Fourteen

Formerly brewed at Avery Brewing Company
Style: American Strong Ale
Boulder, Colorado USA

Serve in Snifter, Trappist glass

22oz. bottle. Intriguing aroma, featuring an array of malt and hop characteristics, including darkly toasted toffeeish sweetness, dried fruits, spruce, floral perfume, pineapple and earthiness along with a lighter degree of doughy yeast, peppery alcohol and faint smoke. Deep, clear mahogany color with a lasting, fine, creamy tan head. Flavor profile is also fairly well balanced, with sweet, roasty, caramelized malts and a hint of cocoa combined with a brief hop bite up front followed by a lingering bitterness and citric, spicy character, and seeing a bittersweet, long, mildly alcoholic, semi-dry finish. Palate is fairly active and gently astringent, slightly sticky and combined with a full body. Certainly unique and flavorful, although I found it a bit harsh in places. Regardless, Happy 14th!

Fascinating pour, with a frothy head. Deep dark, lovely color, ecru head. Thin bodied from the get go, boozy too. Flavors of smoky charred bread with raisins dipped in piney hop resin. Has a definite funky smell, like a smoky, fungal smell from your dorm room closet years ago...but more enticing than that somehow (probably because there is distinct cacao or other dark bitter chocolate). Weird as hell. Ernest is right, definite notes of ashtray in this beer, but yet, it’s not too bad. Did I say piney hop resin is draped all over this thing?

Looks and pours absoulitey beuatiful. The aroma is slight candied sugar, herbs and caramel. taste is malt heavy first, then hop aroma. touch of herbs and mints flavors that hits you in the end. a real winner.

Dark brown body, no, more like mahogany with a tint of crimson coming in....clear at foot, ...fluffy, cocoa-toned head. Aroma: SWEET-ness!...chocolate, spice, mollases, nuts, brown sugar, lovely, and utterly malt-alicious...now to taste ’er! More of the same, now dancing on the tongue...sweet, plump, chocolate chip’n’raisin-y goodness, caramel chewiness, blasts of black pepper, lush molasses, dark rum & anise Long lasting finish, full bodied, and very special...happy 14th, guys!

UPDATED: OCT 15, 2007 Bottle from Friar Tuck in Savoy, IL. Pours a beautiful dark brown/black with a thick brown head- very stout like. Aroma of caramelized sugar, raisen, hops, and tobacco. Full bodied with a slight stickiness to the rich malty texture. Initial flavor of molasses, cocoa, and raisen that immediately gets zapped by a citrusy hop middle. Bitter finish is peppery yet moderately sweet. I am not totally sold on black IPA’s yet, but I enjoyed this much better when it warmed. I think this is better than Stone 11th, at least right now.

Big dark color and off white head make this a beautiful looking beer. Lots of malt with some fruit and sugar in the nose Smoky malt taste with some hops tucked away in the flavor. As it warmed up, the flavors really started to stand out. Very smooth finish and sneaky alcohol strength. I liked it, but just like a lot of Avery beers, be careful of the sensory onslaught. Not for the faint of drink.

Ebony-brown with mahogany hues. Creamy light-beige head holds well and contributes ample lace. Confused and unrefined aroma reveals mint, watermelon seeds, black chocolate, stale tobacco, peach, and roasted malt. Overbearingly resinous and grassy. Obviously-forced carbonation quickly falls out of suspension before depositing a terribly fuzzy residue on the palate. Cool breaths of mint erupt from the combination of alcohol and hops, and soon give way to snappy, barky roast and toffeeish Munich. Bitterly piney and stewed peachy as well as harshly roasty. Rather than sporting a clean and poignant bitterness, the hop character is fairly dirty, muddled and lacking in definition. Gooey resins intensify by the second, leaving little to no room for any bright hop flavors to exude. Plummy esters are appealing, but only compound the gooeyness of the hops and poor attenuation/tackiness. Alcohol is well concealed. Finishes intensely resinous, but mostly flabby and limply hoppy, with notes of sherbet, grapefruit peel and bittersweet chocolate. Styrians are among my favorite hops, but the copious amounts used here have done little to help this. No restraint or finesse here at all. The hops, particularly in the nose, are so overbearing they begin to mirror cheese curd (not in that pleasant farmhouse kind of way, either). This comes across as a discordant mess more than anything else. And while I hate to sound like a broken record, if Avery would have put forth the extra effort and bottle conditioned this, it would be markedly improved. Attenuation could also use some work here (quite low), but the appearance is pretty good (for being force carbonated *doh* there’s that word again).

I’ve had this young and now rating it after its aged some. Chocolatey malty aroma, i remember the fresher bottle having a lot more hops in the nose. Pours very dark brown with a dense tan head that lasts with thick lacing. Strong malt flavors with strong chocolate and cola like flavors with a somewhat hoppy finish. The younger bottle definitely had stronger hop flavors, but this is really good too. It’s very smooth.