Yards Tavern Spruce

On tap, at City Tavern. Pours a clear ruby body with a small wispy light beige head. Really interesting spruce and piney nose, sweet spices and cinnamon overlay fruity malt. Super weird and unique flavor, it tastes like a Christmas beer. Very sweet with a sap like finish. Medium bodied, a little cloying, especially at the end. Moderate soft carbonation. Certainly different, I really enjoyed about the first six ounces or so of this, but it was not worth trying to drink the whole 16 oz serving. So I’ll say that this rating is only for the first half of the glass!

Older bottle I forgot about. Pours a dark copper with a tiny little white head. The aroma is very spicy with slight malt undertones. Not much a beery smell. The taste is antiseptic in it’s spiciness. Spruce, nutmeg, ginger, cloves and more attack the tongue in a barrage of forest like tastes. After so much time cellaring (2 years-ish), the spiciness has subdued and everything is balanced out. Still not too enjoyable, but a vast improvement.

12oz bottle, courtesy of LordMaynard. Thanks, Russ! Pours a medium-dark, amber-brown color; thin khaki colored-head with patchy lacing. Very immediate, sticky sweet aroma of pine needles, spruce, and essentially the insides of a sugary forest, a forest where gingerbread men reside. Medium-to-full mouthfeel: molasses, sugar, and gingerbread; just tastes like crystallized sugar and ginger and sweetness; pretty interesting, but just sticky sweet and chewy and hard to drink much of this; a touch watery. Lengthy finish, with molasses, gingerbread, and spruce.

Bottle. (a blue one) Pours a hazy dark amber color with an off white head. Aroma of spruce, molasses, malts, and fermented fruit. Taste of molasses, malt, spruce, and a hint of mint. Has a sweet crisp finish. Interesting beer. Not bad at all.