Thursday, January 3, 2013

A Year of Craft Beer, Vol. 3, Pennsylvania Brewing Company Nut Roll Ale

Pennsylvania Brewing Company's Nut Roll Ale is on the list for tonight.  This was one of the beers in Scoats's 24 beers of Christmas cases that he did out of the Grey Lodge with Michael Ryan Lawrence Writer/Director of "Beeradelphia".  24 cases of 24 different winter beers.  They can only get better!



I did a little poking around on Beer Advocate before I opened this bottle.  Many of the reviews were average about this beer.  The first one that I read, however, was pretty critical and I am going to have to side with that fella and give this beer a 5 out of 10.

The bottle passes the homebrewer test and can be reused, so I will up that to 6 out of 10!
The color, well see for yourself, the pic is pretty explanatory.  And yes it is hazy, but as a homebrewer, that is more than acceptable to me!  

It is mildly cabonated with barely any head and no "lacing" (I'm stepping up my vocab).  Lacing is sort of like "legs" in wine for the beers' head if I recollect.  

The aroma?  Gingerbread.  Fairly strong.  Too strong for my liking, but might be good to cook with!  I'm not quite sure how they captured the bready aroma of gingerbread, but from looking at it and knowing a bit about cooking, I'd say they actually cooked with gingerbread. 

It tastes just as strong in that respect, but instead of a good brown ale base to the beer, it tastes to me like Schmidts (sp?) with the christmas flavors added right to it.  I'm smelling that cheap corn lager stench that Schmidts had and tasting it as well.  Maybe its the natural flavors that they put forth on the label in some weird combination.  It does have a malt hint to it and it is sweet.  Has a good mouthfeel and is pleasant to drink with a little aftertaste immediately and tapering off.  I'm guessing that very little hops were used in this beer.

I personally don't like it too much.  I would drink as many free ones that were offered to me though!

yeah, a generous 6 out of 10

What do you think?

1 comment:

Scoats said...

I liked it but wasn't wowed by it. I was expecting more.

Looking forward to your thoughts on their St. Nikolaus Bock, which I had last night. We'll see if we come to the same conclusion on that one.