Brewery Website: http://www.redhook.com
Type of Beer: American Amber / Red Ale
Alcohol Content: 5.9%
Beer Review -
Appearance: The color of this beer can best be described as a bright copper with chestnut hue. Poured with a fluffy, one-finger, off-white head that slowly settled down to a sticky film that forms a beautiful lace on the side of the glass.
Smell: Smell begins somewhat sweet with bready malts, caramel and toasted malts. Some citrus hops creep to help spice things up. There is a graininess in the finish. While the smell is more on the subtle side of things it’s still alluring enough to wet your appetite.
Initial Taste: The flavor picks up where the smell leaves off. Smooth and creamy mouth-feel with bready malts and sweet caramel coming up to bat first. Followed up quickly by a crisp toasted graininess. The hops make there way across the palate last with a subtle but welcome fruity and herbal bitterness. Finishes dry and crisp with some lingering malt sweetness.
Thoughts: Late Harvest Autumn Ale is Redhook’s fall seasonal. Redhook describes this beer as “easy-drinking, yet flavorful brew” and I think they accomplished exactly that. It’s a fall beer that’s NOT an Oktoberfest, which I find extremely refreshing as it seems every brewery either makes an Oktoberfest or pumpkin beer for the fall season. It’s very nice to have another option on the table. This still gives you the full bodied creaminess you find in your Marzan Oktoberfests but the main difference here is that it’s an ale with a flavorful hop complexity. Something that you rarely find in the other fall seasonals. This beer is robust enough to appease the hop heads yet subtle enough to drink as a session beer. Highly recommend.
Brewery Website: http://www.magichat.net/
Type of Beer: American Amber / Red Ale
Alcohol Content: 5.4%
Beer Review -
Appearance: Pours an attractive crystal-clear, golden-amber hue. The two finger, off white head that looked so nice when pouring the beer dissipates rather quickly leaving behind a creamy film on the beer. There didn’t seem much to any lacing. The one aspect of this beer that does stand out is the carbonation; even with a heavy pour the carbonation bubbling off the bottom of the glass is very noticeable.
Smell: Smell is what you expect from an Oktoberfest; sweet,toffee, malty and biscuity. The smell is nice and strong which I believe is due to the heavy carbonation. There is also a hint of something else in there, a fruity/melon scent. It’s not prominent but if you look for it you’ll notice it.
Initial Taste: The taste is one of familiarity as it tastes a lot like the other craft oktoberfests on the market. However there are a couple discernible differences. Starts off mild and sweet with toffee and caramel flavors dominating the palate. There is a slight hoppy bitterness that helps gives some energy to the sweet flavors. The carbonation is still pretty heavy taking away the smooth creamyness that this beer could have had lots of. The scent of melon (maybe cantaloupe) has made it’s way into the flavor as well. It’s a funky flavor that is extremely hard to pin down. It doesn’t hurt the beer by any means, instead it adds a little mystery which makes you want to keep tasting it. The finish is a little dryer than I would have liked.
Thoughts:It’s important to remember that this isn’t your typical oktoberfest lager. It’s an ale (amber ale) with oktoberfest style ingredients. Magic Hat is well known for making slightly odd-ball brews with flavors you normally wouldn’t see in beers. Hex fits in very well to their lineup of strange brews. This “hybrid” oktoberfest or as they put it “Ourtoberfest” is a mild beer that tastes mostly like a Marzan with it’s sweet flavors and buscuity maltiness. There is only a slight hint that this beer isn’t a lager as the hops make the beer a little dryer than what you would normally see in an oktoberfest marzan style lager. The is also a special ingredient they fail to mention. I personally think it’s some sort of melon but you will have to taste to determine for yourself. The flavors are quite mild making this is a worth session beer. I would have liked a little less carbonation, more flavor and a little more balance to the sweetness but overall it’s a decent beer that I will certainly buy again. Cheers!
Brewery Website: http://www.atlantabrewing.com
Type of Beer: Amber Ale
Alcohol Content: 5.70%
Beer Review -
Appearance: Unsurprisingly the color of this amber ale is…amber! Clarity is about 100% and poured with a nice two finger white head that didn’t hang around long leaving behind some fairly decent lacing.
Smell: Not a whole lot going on with the smell on this ale. Toasted caramel and bready malts dominate the nose. Quite a sweet and light smelling beer. There is a very slight earthy hop smell on the end.
Initial Taste: Starts off with nice toffee sweetness picked up from the caramel malts along with soft bread-like yeast flavor that helps mellow out the sweetness. The light flavors that kicked this beer off gave way to a slight bitter hoppy profile. The earthy bitterness continues to the finish leaving you with a somewhat dry aftertaste.
Thoughts: There is actually a story behind this beer. Laughing Skull beer was a special beer brewed by Red Brick Brewing (formerly Atlanta Brewing Co) for The Vortex restaurant in Atlanta. The beer was discontinued in 2005. However in 2009 after a few years of upset beer lovers and letters to the brewery Red Brick decided to bring this uniquely named beer back to the market. However this time it has been released as an Amber Ale and not a Bohemian Pilsner like the original. Sadly this beer is only available in the Southeast. Red Brick states that since it’s re-release this beer has been their biggest seller. There is good reason why this beer is so popular, the flavor is sweet, mild and pretty well balanced with a nice earthy hoppiness. There is not offensive about this beer, just a nice (low flavor) ale that makes for great drinkability. So as an Amber Ale there are much nicer beers out there but as a session beer, this does just fine. I highly recommend.
