Birchwood Ale
Northwoods Brewpub and Grill

 

Wow....I had big expectations on this one...feel way short. The beer poured a deep brownish amber with thin white head that is not leaving much of a lace. The scent has a strong acidic flare to it....not quite sure how to even describe it...perhaps wet fragrant wood??? The taste would remind me of chewing on a tooth pick way too long....but with more intensity. At the end there is a alcohol trail. The mouthfeel is very light and watery body with ok carbonation. Overall....not something I would choose to try again.

 

Reviewed from session notes.

A. Hazy brownish-amber in color with no head or lacing at all.

S,T. Light brown sugar, caramel malt, and grainy bread tones throughout. Also I can only detect a small amount of pretty standard boiled bittering hops throughout, as well as a bit of earthy toned aroma hopping. Somebody else already mentioned it, but this really does come across as more of a brown ale than a PA. Because it is marketed as a pale ale, I am forced to remove some significant review points.

M. Still too thin and watery, sluggishly undercarbonated

 

Dirty dishwater brown with a cluster of larger bubbles when poured, later a faded crescent of skim against the edge of the glass. Murky orange brown with suspended sediment visible. Questionable APA appearance... looks more like murky homebrew.

Sweet molasses, plum and fig aroma. Smells far better than expected.

Flavors of molasses, plums, multigrain bread, and some residual low level hoppy bitterness and somewhat complex malt flavors. Unfortunately Birchwood is watery just like all of the other Northwoods beers. Carbonation is nearly nonexistent, but it still has a medium body to it. Kind of a mixed bag here... with more carbonation it would improve tenfold. Does not look, smell, or taste like a pale ale, but it's a decent beer, more like a dunkel or brown ale, though the brewery describes it as a pale.

A. Poured a cloudy apricot yellow with a short off white head, not much lacing on the glass.

S. Malt, caramel, citrus, fruit.
T. Malty caramel, fruit, hops, pine.

M. Medium bodied lightly carbonated. Dry finnish

D. A pretty good APA. Decent balance sweet malt and hops. I could drink a couple of these on a warm spring day. I thought the pour looked rather flat but the mouthfeel was well carbonated.

Served on draft, at Northwoods. Hoppiness is actually more bitter than they describe, and it almost detracts from an otherwise decent malt balance. I caught an odd note of strawberries, but maybe it’s just me. Now it's making me start to wonder what some kind of birch aging might do. Hmm...