Heather Ales Alba

Brewed by Williams Brothers (Heather Ales)
Style: Traditional Ale
Alloa, Central, Scotland

Tempting dark amber hue but poured with hardly any head. Sweet, fruity smell something like apple candy. Resin flavors, reflective of the pine and spruce used in the brewing process. The mouthfeel is somewhat numbing, especially towards the middle and back. Odd but not unpelasant. Tingly but almost flat at the same time. A gentle beer. Unique woodsy character and a rich but not complex body.

330 ml, bbe Oct 08. Copper and clear with a small but persistent head. Aroma is sweet and spicy molasses, ale yeast, marshmallows, and maybe a hint of evergreen resin. Flavor is spicy molasses, marshmallow, and some Fuggles seem to be in there as well. Finish is where the evergreen shows up, and reminds me of the stimulating stuff they used to brush through your hair after a barbershop haircut. Once my buds get used to the flavor, I really like it. Palate is light-medium and watery, slightly dry. Basically a decent Scottish ale with an evergreen flourish at the end. And although the spruce finish can become a bit much ( I cudna drink more than twa), I like the beer.

Quite nice and delivering nearly exactly the description provided by the brewer. Smooth and malty with an up front woodiness that borders on fruity, but seemingly mellows as you work you way through this beer. Very good at nearly room temperature.

Bottle. Sour milk, molasses aroma with a hint of pine. Cloudyl brown color with a thin film of head. Spicy pine and brown sugar malt flavor. Smooth tasting with a piney aftertaste. A nice beer experience.

A Mes rate: 33cl bottle from Odd Bins. Very attractive dark amber colour with a slight off white film. LOVE the smell. Pine and spruce fall out of the top of the glass but underneath there is lots of complexity. Estery, plenty of berries, sugar, malt, yeast, some bready notes and just a lick of vanillary alcohol. Ooh pithy cherries too. Lovely aroma. Flavour is not quite so complex but still pretty good. Spruce and pine is not usually my thing but it works really well here. The berries come at you thick and fast and pretty much any stemmed fruit I can think of seems to be in there. Alcohol is hidden really well until the finish but it comes in nice and soft and just adds a really pleasant warmth on the way down. There is just a very slight acrid sticky feel at the back of the palate that lets it down a little for me. Maybe it is just a touch too sweet but I like a lot of what these guys make and this one is very close to excellent.

[416-20070709] 330mL (By Dec-07). Sickly heavy forest resin base aroma with weird chocolate notes and light sickly licorice. Clear, dark brown amber body with a quick off-white bubbly head. Floral malt flavour with heavy grain. Medium-full body. Unpleasant, mildly offensive.

Bottle, July 2007. Clear, red-copper color with a nice, creamy white head. Aroma is herbal, spicy, piney very resinous and a bit sweet. Flavor is strong, malty, caramelly, profound toffeeish and a strange herbal-bitter ending. Mouthfeel is medium, filling and warmig. Nice, strange, traditional ale.

Light brown cloudy color and small head. Aroma was interesting, but flavor was strange- it may have been the pine. The beer was aged a few years so it may have lost something