Eastern Shore St. Michaels Ale

Brewed by Eastern Shore Brewing
Style: Amber Ale
St. Michaels, Maryland USA

Serve in English pint, Shaker

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Serving: 12 oz. bottle from State Line Liquors. It pours a clear amber color with a decent sized off white head. There is a good bit of activity with head too. The nose is slightly fruity (apple mainly) with an odd chemical and caramel note. Thankfully the flavor wasn’t too bad. That apple is there with a little bit of sourness, slight varnish notes, some cracker and a faint caramel note in the back. Overall it’s not the worst beer ever but clearly there are some issues here. If they get this dialed in it could be a great session brew for malt fans.

Location: 22 oz bottle from Buy Rite, 5/17/12

Aroma: The nose is malts, caramel, and some (unintentional?) sourness
Appearance: It pours an unclear orange color with a small white head
Flavor: The taste is light sweet, light-mid sour, and light bitterness
Palate: The body is light-medium, with lively carbonation, and a pretty decent mouthfeel to it
Overall Impression: Look at that, rater # 9. This one is still in single digits. I guess they don’t have much distribution. I can’t decide if this was a decent sour or a completely unintentional one, but I am leaning strongly toward unintentional, so my rating is based on that...
Still, it kind of works as an unintentional sour...

@GABF-on tap-pours amber with an offwhite head. Aroma is soft light malt. Taste is soft light malt, hint of hops.

Toasted grain nose, rather bland. Taste is lightly sweet, very lightly bitter, light caramel, some toasted malt. Clean, but dull.

THOUGHTS: Very flavorful. I just wished they were better flavors. It was definitely interesting, but I think the sourness was unintentional. After checking the beer’s description on their website, I’m pretty sure it was contaminated. It seemed like a beer that went bad. If it was intentional I might have given it an 8 for flavor, a 4 for palate and a 15 overall; but it wasn’t. TECHNICAL: Bottle. Poured a very dark nearly brown amber or copper, like and extremely dirty penny. It also had a large, meringue-like, off-white head that very slowly diminished and kept a thick sheet and left good lacing. The aroma had light to moderate caramel; something like licorice or cola; sour fruit and slight lemon. The initial flavor was light to somewhat sweet and lightly sour; while the finish was moderate to rather sour and slightly sweet with an average to long duration. There was mostly sour fruit and some caramel malt and a little metallic hops. The light to medium body was sort of water, a bit oily and then dry with fizzy carbonation and a dry and light to moderately astringent finish.

12oz bottle. Pours a nice amber, crystal clear, with an off-white head of small bubbles. Way too carbonated for an ale. No nose to speak of. Decent mouthfeel, fairly smooth. Taste of burnt sugar. Is that supposed to be caramel? I will say the hops balance the malt, because I can barely taste the hops...wait, there’s a little bit in back. The ABV is too high for a session beer, not saying that that this is what it’s supposed to be. I like the ESB offerings better.

Nice low-tech label on the bottle. Super foamy pour. Fairly bitter, nasty aroma. Pretty bitter and sour homebrew flavor. This bottle is definitely off, so I would like to give it another try. It is still drinkable, but just barely. I like Saint Michaels and the Eastern Shore, and they deserve to have a good local brew, so I am hoping to see better from them.

Taster at brewery. Poured amber with an off-white head. Pronounced caramel sweetness with a slight hop bitterness. Decent.

UPDATED: JUL 10, 2010 On tap @ the Brewery-Clear amber color w/a moderate off white head. Crisp hop aroma. Good bit of hop on the front end, really more than I like in an amber. I prefer mine w/more of a malt/sweet finish. Found it to be a bit one dimensional w/a slight medicinal flavor to it, but I am not a hop head-they will probably love this brew! Short hop finish. Very sound/solid brew-just not my personal preference in this style.

Had this one again on 2 return visits to the brewery & wasn’t very fond of it. Had a funky, skunky homebrew, medicinal flavor to it. I mentioned something to the bar tender on one visit & he seemed offended by my comments. When the owned asked me @ it, I told him it just wasn’t my thing, which he seemed to accept. I really enjoyed this brewery & all their other brews, so maybe that’s the case. There were others there who seemed to enjoy this, but I won’t drink it again.