Heather Ales Ebulum

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

April 3, 2005 - Clachaig Inn, Glencoe, Scotland - Dark with shortly lived head. Smooth drinking ale with roasted coffee-like aromas with hints of wine or brandy. Nice beer consumed in a beautiful highland setting.

Enjoyed at Cicero’s. Pour is black with a nice mid tan head. Aroma is malt and tye. Flavor is malt, roastiness, smoke, dark fruit. There is a lot going on in this beer and it is very interesting in that great Old World way. A cool beer.

Pours a transparent dark mahogany with ruby hues and a thin ring of spotty off-white head. Aroma of dark fruits and some mild peat and caramel malt. Starts well-carbonated and fairly full with some lightly smoky and fruity tartness before a drier earthy finish. An interesting and fairly complex brew.

Chocolate, coffee aroma. Deepest brown, cappuccino head. Coffee, reminds me of a stout.Extr smooth/

Good looking dark bear, faint berry taste, not much into fruit beers, but was one of the better ones, I’ve had

Dark beer out of the bottle with some reddish glints around the edges when held to the light. Initial foamy beige head that falls back to an attractive whisp. Nose is of roasted grains (almost burnt) and berry. The flavor is dominated by the roasted grains, ash and almost burnt coffee. Having never had elderberries I don’t know if this is what they taste like, but there is a subtle berry tartness in the middle. If you like roasty in your beer then you will like this.

The Heather Ale brewery are making a name for themselves with their offerings of 4,000 year old ale recipes with slightly unusual ingredients. Some people try them for the historical connection: ’So this is what those ancient Celts drank!’ Some people try them for the unusual flavours: ’Ah heather! I wonder what that’s like in a beer?’ But then most are put off because the description (ale, lager) doesn’t match the experience. It’s happened to me on a few beers - my brain is expecting one range of flavours, but my mouth is encountering something completely different. Confusion results and I downgrade the brew. With Ebulum one might expect a fruit beer of some sort. Well, there is fruit present, but it plays a minor, though significant, role in the taste encounter. To better prepare yourself, and to judge if this is the beer for you, consider Ebulum as part of the Porter family. The rich roasty, chocolate flavours, balanced by a mildly acidic fruity tone, all held together with a light, refreshing body would be recognisable to lovers of Porter. And I loved this beer. Surprisingly modern, this is a complex and fairly challenging ale. It hides its strength well - using the alcohol to enhance the flavours rather than produce a blunt alcohol kick. I drank mine at cellar temperature - I’m not quite sure why the brewers suggest slightly chilled.

Faint, winey aroma with some chocolate notes. Dark, ruby red to jet black pour with a dark eggnog colored head - good lacing. Flavor has hints of cherries, (could be elderberries - not familiar with them) faint chocolate with a distinct wine-like aftertaste. Best of these Scottish Traditional ales to date.