Heather Ales Alba

Cloudy amber w/ thick, creamy finger of beige foam. Sweet aroma of carmel, butterscotch, fruit (berries, apples, pineapples[?]), & pine/spruce needles. Medium, oily body w/ a light effervescence. Earthy caramel & butterscotch flavour w/ woody pine & spruce notes. Also has a peppery, medicinal quality.

Bizarre but intriguing. Sweet, jam-like, sugary, berry aroma with spicy pine-like character. Opaque, amber-brown with thin, off-white head that recedes to lasting ring and thin cover. Plenty of yeast in suspension. Very sweet jam-like berry flavour with shortbread-like sweet dough and a lightly spicy herbal tone. Medium body with fair carbonation that is engaging on the tongue. Bottle (LCBO - Nov. 2004).

33cl bottle. Average orange/brown pour with bubbly, quickly gone head. Smell is of sweet malts and pine. Remarkably smooth taste, pine and spruce never seem to bite the tongue. Tastes like it had been well aged in wood casks. Light resin in the mouthfeel, but much different than hops. Alcohol is detectable, but doesnt burn. An interesting, tasty brew.

Once I picked it up, I could not stop smelling this brew. It was a refreshing , slightly piney, smelll not unlike mountain air, mixed with a decidedly grape aroma. I’ve found with many traditional style ales that they do not have large heads, nor do they retain them overly long. This brew fit that profile with a slight, quickly dissipating dusting atop its brown body. With an immediately quenching body and slight mead-like sweetness, this brew masks its 7.5% alchohol content well. Its actually extremely quaffable. In a blind test, I guessed 4.7%. I was way off. This is one unique and pleasing brew.

Pours a light brown with a fast fading head. Smells of a bit of malt. Taste is a bit strange -- at first, my impression is of a run of the mill beer. But then in the finish, I get a taste of tree bark. Palate is medium. Overall, it’s a good beer, but I’m not really that excited about having it again.

Brownish orange with a slight head, this has a nice, air-freshener kind of a pine smell. When I tasted it, I almost whiplashed my neck, it caused me to jerk my head back that fast. Not because it was bad. It had a SHARP spruce taste that surprized me. Very lively and tasty. It’s got a clean, fresh finish. I’d have more of this.

Nice complex maltiness supporting a lighter-than-expected spruce flavor. Kind of a wine-like texture and mouthfeel. I enjoyed this rather more than I expected to.

Appearance: orangey brown with a small beige head. Smells sweet, slightly floral, coppery/metallic. Taste is malty, leafy, slight pininess- not overly strong. Decent.