Wisby Påsköl
Gotlands Bryggeri

 

 

A: This beer pours deep amber/golden with a large pale beige head that slowly dissipates into rich lacings.

S: Light roasted sweet malt. Some floral hops. Kind of metallic.

T: Sweet light roasted malt balanced with floral and bitter hops. Dark bread. The bitter hops are quite offensive and makes the beer kind of rough.

M: Body is full and carbonation is medium. Aftertaste is long and very bitter, but in this case - that's not a good thing (offensive and rough bitterness).

O: A beer that tries to be a lot of things, too bad they didn't make up their mind which beer-style they wanted to brew.

The brew is brown deep amber, a tan high head that settles rather slowly and a bit unevenly, leaves lacing, has some curtains.

A sweet brown bread and sugar aroma, some hay.

Sweet, porridge with brown sugar, some dried fruits, raisins and apples, a faint orange nuance. A short bitter tang.

Medium carbonation, soft and a bit sticky, a rather full body, a coarse dry finish.

This is the 2011 vintage, a bit unbalanced between sticky sweet and raw bitter.

The Gotlands Bryggeri is an experimental workshop (of sorts) for the large brewery Spendups. As such, the products are… experimental and very diverse. The påsköl (Easter beer) was introduced as a potent Vienna lager a few years back, but in 2005 it is a dark top fermented beer with three handlings of hops, that resembles of a German altbier.

The colour is dark brown red amber, the liquid is clear. The finger thick off white foam decreases quite quickly into an uneven thin lid.

The smell is rather complex, but I found it quite unbalanced and chemical with lots of aroma hops. I found notes of boiled vegetables, celery, hazelnuts, almonds, somewhat roasted, laurel leafs (?), and gravy.

The carbonation is rather mild and short, but it is also a bit sharp. Not entirely pleasant, I think.

The taste is … kind of odd: You could not complain about the full-bodied roasted malts, but the many flavours from the hops just don’t keep together! There are sour notes of dark bread, tobacco, liquorice, aniseed, sauerkraut and a somewhat frowzy note.

The aftertaste is in fact better than the first notes. I noticed some vegetables, celery, green peas and a full-grown bitterness with some sour notes. The long finish got touches of treacle and liquorice.