Drakes Amber Ale

Brewed by Drakes Brewing Company
Style: Amber Ale
San Leandro, California USA

Serve in English pint, Shaker

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Appearance: Pours a clear dark amber with a 1/8 inch tan film.

Aroma: Sweetened iced tea and a faint dank hop nose.

Taste: Sweet bready malt. Citrus american hop juicy bitterness. Very balanced.

Mouthfeel: Medium bodied, juicy,with modest carbonation.

Overall: Highly drinkable, very balanced between malty and bitter, and exceeded my expectations.

Hazy medium brown color with a creamy beige head. Good head retention and lacing. Bready malts with a chocolatey tinge. Also some toast and caramel. Flavor has some cocoa and toast with lighter orange and butter notes. Sort of earthy and maybe a bit vegetal. Nice heft to the body but not a very clean mouthfeel. Reasonably drinkable.

I’m not a big Amber fan, but this one was quite nice. Malt and sweetness fill the nose and mouth. Not too complex, but a very nice refreshing amber.

(Bottle via trade with IrishBoy, thanks Richard!) Pours a hazy deep burnt amber with about 1" of rocky biscuit head. Rich aroma of toasted caramel and toffee, fruity hops, vanilla and malt. Spotty lacing. Palate is pretty thick and smooth for an amber. Taste of rich but light caramel, hops and malt and a fairly bitter finish. Nice rich beer.

Courtesy aspidites and stoutlover72. Clear amber and a small, off white cap. Nose of toasty, bicuity malt and some crisp, lightly sharp hops. Similar flavor with some cocoa powder. Tastes English. Medium/light body, balanced. Very drinkable.

UPDATED: DEC 16, 2007 Bottle -- thanks, aspedites!

Amber ales don’t have to be yawners, and Drakes is among a few west-coast breweries leading the charge. And their salvation need not lie in IPA-level hopping, as this one demonstrates.

The bewer pours a deep red-brown with a small head. Burnt caramel, roast nuts, and rotting wood on the nose. The aroma offers all of the above against an earthy, solid backbone, a sour hint, chewy malts but little sugar, full earthy / plum-skin hops on the finish. The mouthfeel is thin enough to be quite sippable, but buttery-smooth enough to provide ample body. This is a masterfully brewed beer and a welcome antidote to the amber ale boredom that sets in after one has sampled a few dozen of the large-micro ambers.

Bottle. Pours dark copper and red. Aroma features a powerful waft of caramel, toffee, ripe plum, ripe orange. Perfect creamy, medium-body mouthfeel. Flavor follows suit, with blasts of fruit-forward hops, pronounced toasted caramel and toffee candy, a bit of earthy minerality, strong flavor finish with bitter undertones. Hoppy, malty, robust, satisfying for the style. As my friend affectionately noted, this is “an amber for beer geeks.”

12 oz bottle, Hennepin glass, Noogfest. Brown-amber hue with a medium, off white head. Aroma of caramel, treacle, honey, maple syrup and a floral hint. Astonishingly huge aroma for an amber ale. HUGE, I say. However, the flavor is rather disappointing. In fact, if I rated upon crushed dreams this would get a ’1’ for flavor. But I don’t. Decent taste, feels kind of watered down, light caramel sweetness throughout with a moderate floral bite to the finish. Medium bodied with a watery texture and soft carbonation.

12oz - thanks Irishboy - Aroma is sticky carmel and toffee with a bit of hops. Pours transparent amber with a huge fluffy head and good lacing. Flavor is roasty malts and hops backed by the sticky carmel and toffee from the aroma. Palate is sticky and tart. Almost a scottish ale in my opinion. Very tasty.

From a 12oz Bottle. Mostly hazy, brown sugar colored pour with a huge head of fizzy beige. Unusually high level of carbonation. Estery nose of pear skins and apple. Malty notes of bread crust and biscuit lay beneath. Too estery for my tastes. Light bodied, heavily carbonated mouthfeel with a dry, seltzery texture. Flavors of biscuit and caramel malt, followed by a bold hop bitterness; in fact, orval-like hop bitterness. Tastes suspiciously bretty, contributing to a funky earthy quality that dominates the finish. Dirty.