Brewers Alley 1634 Ale

Brewed by Brewer’s Alley Restaurant & Brewery
Style: Specialty Grain
Frederick, Maryland USA

Serve in Shaker, Tumbler

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Draft at the restaurant. Pours clear reddish brown. Tastes dry and spiced like nutmeg and ginger. Strange flavor. Medium body and low carbonation. Smells like rye and caraway seeds.

12 oz. Copper with a small lasting head. Nose is spicy, toasted rye bread and molasses. Flavor is toasted grain, earthy molasses, a touch of orange toffee, and a peppery spicy finish that showcases the rye and caraway seed. Light-medium body is well balanced and finishes crisp. A fine experiment that would make a nice session ale.

Location: 12 oz bottle from State Line, 2/17/13

Aroma: The nose has a lot of rye bread/caraway seeds, some spice, and some medicinal cherry
Appearance: This one is a dark reddish beer with a small beige that leaves very little lace
Flavor: This is a weird flavor, you can really taste the caraway, which works surprisingly well, there’s some additional spices that work alright, and then there’s the artificial fruit flavored medicine/cough syrup type component that come through in the later palate, and that doesn’t work at all. Really weird.
Palate: The body is light-medium, it has some stickiness, lively carbonation, and a lengthy finish
Overall Impression: I seriously don’t know what to make of this one. Somehow it managed to both really work and be really terrible all at once. This is kind of a roller coaster of a beer. This is also a mess of a beer. I can’t imagine Lord Baltimore, the Calverts, Millard E.Tydings, Edgar Allan Poe, or any one else for that matter enjoying this one regularly, but maybe it grows on you...

Draft at the brewpub. Poured a dark copper color with a small off-white head. Aroma was caramel malts, heavy on the rye spice character. Flavor was brown sugar, heavy on the spice notes, perhaps a bit too spicy and earthy and heavy, especially for only 5.1%.

Reviewed 8/29. 12 oz bottle poured into a beer mug. A: Pours a slightly reddish copper color. There are tiny little yeast particles in the body, but don’t hurt the clarity too much. The head is pretty poor, a one finger eggshell color that fades to a light collar in no time flat, but leaves a bit of lacing on the glass. S: Caramel, toffee, faint wheat, brown sugar, molasses, and a little bit of spice. The rye isn’t particularly evident in the aroma. T: Sweet and lightly nutty to start, before finishing with a touch of savory spice and rye. The initial flavors are stronger than the finishing ones, but the balance between sweet and savory is pulled off decently. Not an intense or terribly interesting beer, but easy to drink. M: Textured well enough, but it’s a little chalkier than I prefer. The dryness the rye malt imparts is a nice touch that aids drinkability. Carbonation is medium. O: Decent, no more, no less. Basically the kind of beer you either A) buy to fill out a mixed six pack with, or B) get at a bar because you don’t want to have Fat Tire for the 439th time. It’s different and drinkable enough to be worth a shot.

Bottle from State Line. Pours translucent deep copper toward brown with 1-finger frothy off-white head. Nose is caramel malt, earthy hops, mild butyric acid. Tastes earthy, vienna malty, with finishing brown sugar and hops. Overall not very complex, with finishing corn flakey flavor.

Tap. Pours cloudy, pale yellow with thin, fizzy white head; short retention and spare lacing. Aroma is banana, grain, straw malt, grassy hops, light citrus, and faint herbs. Flavor is straw malt forward with heavy banana and some lingering grain notes; dry finish. Light body, low carbonation, and low warmth.

Draft sampler at brewpub. Medium dark amber color with good clarity, defintie rye aroma, body a bit thin, rye flavor somewhat marred by watery quality. My original tasting notes state that with a little more care, this beer could be special. Judging by thehigh ratings for the Brewer’s Alley RyePA which appears to have beeen introduced after my visit to the brewpub, it appears that the brewmaster did indeed put more care into the later recipe.

Poured a clear amber color with a medium-sized off-white creamy head. Aroma has grains with rye and some pumpernickel. Taste has a ton of rye with lots of spices and wheat. Quite flavorful. Some of the flavors don’t mix well however. Finish is a little dry with more rye. Interesting.