Gulf Islands Fireside Winter Ale

Brewed by Gulf Islands Brewery
Style: Amber Ale
Salt Spring Island, Canada

Serve in English pint, Shaker

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An expensive one, this beer comes in a nice bottle which poured into my glass as an amber colour beer with off white foamy head. Aroma was a tad off, with some sour notes, perhaps its the carrier. Flavour is a mix bag of things I’m honestly not sure of.

Toffee caramel herbs. Amber pour thin to no head. Tofdee caramel earth herbal notes. A little vegetal. Meh (jon 2009).

Draught at St. Augustine’s, Vancouver
Hazy dark amber color, with creamy head. Caramel aroma, mild, with traces of spice. Malt and caramel flavor, with moderate residual sweetness, and a light, pleasant touch of baked goods, cake and cookies, and a hint of spice; correct bitterness.
For once, a good beer from this brewery.

On tap at St. Augustine’s, pours clear copper. Aroma is quite weak, with vanilla and spices. Flavour is a thin, uncomplex vanilla, popcorn and light spices. Quite watered down and underwhelming.

500 mL bottle. After trying this beer, I went and read what others had to say about it, something I don’t usually do. I wanted to be sure that I didn’t just get a bad bottle. Apparently I didn’t. Overpowering popcorn kernels (diacetyl) is tough to get past, but once you do, it’s still a strange, spicy, vegetal mess. I wish I colud rate lower than 1 for aroma.

Comes in a beautiful bottle, a light-tan coloured non-transparent glass reminiscent of old earthenware bottles, with the same type of stopper as Grolsch uses. Colour was a fantastic, rich amber, with very little head or aroma. Bad news as to taste, because I left this too long before drinking and it had gone seriously off. Taste was basically sour. Moral of this is drink it soon even if kept in the fridge, because nearly seven months old destroyed this one. Try again this Christmas, I guess. Re-reviewed 01 March 2006. Bought this again in December (produced only for Christmas). Still comes in a swing-top bottle with a very nice label; this season’s bottle was a lovely blue glass, first time I’d seen this for a beer. Small head and a cloudy amber colour; this beer seems to have a fair bit of sediment about it. Not a lot of nose action going on here, a bit of malt, a bit of hop, and some fruit/spice but I can’t tell which. Mouthfeel was somewhat thin to begin, with some sweetness in the aftertaste. Letting this sit for about five minutes after pouring made a world of difference, maybe it just needed to breathe. Taste and mouthfeel were much improved this way.

UPDATED: OCT 5, 2009 So we missed the last ferry back to the mainland and ended up staying in a cheap hotel with a liquor store next door which was open until 11:00 PM, which we had just enough time to crawl into and find this gem sitting alone on a shelf...

Pours a hazy copper colour with the barest hint of foam at the top. I knew I was in for a real clunker when I smelled it - Hoo boy, microwave popcorn left to rot for a month. Tastes perfectly awful, some sort of fruity, vegetal taste - really not sure what’s going on here. Smoked salmon, red pepper, pumpkin, spice, orange juice? I’m not sure it’s infected, but it’s weird... Some carbonation, thin body. This beer is so bad it made me giggle, I probably wouldn’t have been so amused by it had it not been for the bizarre conditions under which it had been found. I have lived in BC for 9 years and never seen this beer before then. Ouch. First and last.

bottle. Red orange, creamy head. Smoked, herbal, light rubbery nose. Wooden, rubbery, vegetables. Light sparkly sticky mouthfeel. Meh

(500ml ceramic bottle) Interesting - a 500ml blue bottle or the 700ml+ pint sized ceramic bottle... same price of $7 at Spinnakers. It arrived, according to staff, today. Very exciting. Okay, that was the most interesting part. This is a stinky butter bomb of diacetyl. Good grief. I think the only worse beer infection was the Granville Island Pale Ale they had on tap at the Tudor House. Very, very poor offering...

UPDATED: JAN 17, 2012 This beer has always sucked. I bought a bottle that was less than a month old and it was infected. Given a chance to try it on tap, I took it since I figured maybe the bottles are the problem. Well, um, no. Looks good. The aroma is carmel and diacetyl. Thin body, vague nuts and more diacetyl. Even when not sour infected this is lousy, unprofessional stuff.