Some beers on brewday

I have two Harvest type Ales to drink for this post. First is Goose Island Harvest Ale. It pours a clear amber and smells of Cascade and alcohol. The taste is dominated by cascade derived grapefruit. It is citrusy, sweet and a little bitter but there is more grain flavour and aroma than bitterness. A very tasty beer indeed.


Next up is a Harvest style beer from England. Batemans combined harvest multi-grain beer. It contains 4 types of grain: Malted Oats, Rye, Wheat & Barley. This poured a clear amber and smelled of Muesli . It tasted a bit like Muesli with water (not milk). I found it quite sweet and there was a lot going on here. In fact there was so much going on with the contrasting grain flavour that I could not pick anything out. It was a very interesting beer and I enjoyed it immensely but I could not pick any one characteristic out.


My love of Brooklyn beers increases with this Brown Ale. It smells like Chocolate fudge and the chocolate continues in the taste along with burnt caramel. It was quite creamy with a sour liquorice finish. A little coffee in there for good measure. It is quite bitter with very little sweetness. It borders on a porter to me.


Timothy Taylor Landlord is an iconic cask ale. I had heard that it is not as good in the bottle so I could not resist. I have had this on cask at the Hilden beer festival but I need a lot more of it, or better a side by side to tell if one version is better than the other. In the bottle I found it tasted like burnt caramel, burnt coffee, Lots of fruit of which Prune stood out. Also a citrus finish and it was pretty oaky. An absolute classic of a beer in bottle, whether it is better in cask is a debate for another time.


I do not have to much to say about this Augustiner Weissbier except that is has the usual German Weiss characteristics but with the addition of being a little sour and not as sweet as many others. It was however perfectly lovely weissbier that I liked and gave to my wife to drink after a few mouthfuls and she really liked it. I will have to get some more of this as to my mind, this is one of the better weissbiers I have had. I would rather a Schneider original but this has earned a place in my heart as well.



All of the previous beers I had yesterday during brewday and today, which is also brewday I had this Great Divide Hercules Double IPA. This is my first outing with Great Divide and has left me wanting more. What a fabulous drink this was, an absolute pleasure from start to finish.
It pours a dark brown with lots of sediment.
Smells of sweet malt & Caramel, alcohol, fruit in the shape of prunes.
The taste starts off sweet then the bitterness comes through with cascade being very evident. Next comes the alcohol which at over 9% is pretty evident and then some fruit. The sweetness is always there. It feels very thick and chewy in the mouth.
While it is a very strong beer in terms of alcohol, it is also pretty drinkable. I treated it as a sipper and nurtured it for an hour or so but I could have had it a lot faster and had a bunch more if I had actually had any more bottles. I decided to follow this with another strong beer and sipped a Fullers 1845 which is just about finished now an hour later. My own beer, The Belgian Dubbel below started the 60 minute boil 10 minutes ago. Time for more beer, I think some Applewheat from the kegerator is in order as it is nice and light.