Heather Ales Alba

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

Golden brown colour, clear. Low head. Sweetish, sticky flavor. Not much aromatic pine. If I didn’t knew, I would not belive it contained pine.

Travel brochures are always telling me to “taste” a foreign country, indicating some unique set of spices or maybe an exotic local fish, but these advertisements never expressly tell me how it is to be done. My common sense tells me not to lick a local native or to start scooping autochthonous soil into my mouth, but digging into the local cuisine doesn’t seem satisfying enough. Luckily for Scotland (and to the detriment of the rest of the Empire) Heather Ales has packed the taste of the Highland hills into its beers. My favorite of the bunch is the Fraoch Heather Ale, but the Alba Pine Ale is a fine substitute to licking the bark off a Scottish pine. The color is very transparent with a lot of red hue, maybe a dark fox fur color. The smell is a lot like wine, sweet with caramel, baked apple and cranberries. What an amazing scent! Heather Ales could market a perfume from this decadent aroma. However, the flavor is a far cry from the aroma, exhibiting a much more savory touch. It tasted a bit like barbeque sauce, or a honey-glazed ham after a celeritous cough syrup flavor. I’ll definitely come back to this beer in time, if only to recommend it to the Scottish Bureau of Tourism and Travel as a fine way to draw inquisitive tourists who may want to follow up on an offer to “Taste Scotland”.

Really good, and the name is good, the art work is really nice, and the taste is very heavy, but it is about craft beers are about. I liked it very nice.

Pours amber/brown with little head. Fades to ring. Aroma has a fruity sweetness to it. Flavor much the same, with some woodsy type finish, not really pine though. Strange but decent.

Scots Pine Ale has a pine and yeasty aroma. The appearance is a deep amber with large particles floating within the beer. The head is nice with lacing. There is a yeasty quality to the flavor with hints of a woodiness.

Bottle. Pours hazy burnt orange with a small off-white head and some lined lacing. Fruit (apple) and pine grassy aroma with malt (cookie) notes. Fruity oak malt and yeast flavor with a pleasing and smooth berry finish. Smooth medium body that is a touch fizzy.

I didn’t care much for it, but it was a matter of personal taste, not lack of quality on the brewer’s part. It had a beige head with decent retention. Kind of a deep amber color, with an intentionally cloudy haze (it’s obviously unfiltered). The aroma was very unique! It spicy, almost wine-like hints. Cidery, but in a good way. I’m not sure I tasted the pine, but I’ve never tasted pine before so I’m not sure what to compare it to.

Bottle @ Medelhavspärlan, Stockholm
Woodsy, springy, sweet. Nice pine character that might be a bit overpowering. A very special brew.