Alpenglow Winter Ale
The Grizzly Paw Brewing Company

 

 

 

Not too much to look at--meagre head had already disappeared by the time the pint arrived at my table, and few signs of lacing; a brown cola colour, but visibly "thin" with some ruby/reddish around the edges. But the smell and the taste are on-point: big, sweet, toasty/roasty malty flavours on both the nose and mouth, with some caramel/toffee, indistinct winter spices, generic fruitiness (like fruit candies? plummy/raisins?) and an ever so slight balancing herbal/fruity hop character. Carbonation on the light side, there is almost no sign here of the 7.5% ABV; it would be both easy and dangerous to put away a couple of these in a session.

It's not as three-dimensional as the best versions of the style (Anchor's annual effort, Deschutes' Jubelale--where you can pick out all these individual flavour notes for hours), but it's much nicer and more balanced than many of the Canadian renditions. In particular, it's much less "synthetic" than the ever-popular Granville Island Winter Ale.

 

 

650ml bomber poured into tulip 30/1/16

A clear reddish brown when held to the light, just a fast falling finger of foam that leaves no lace

S heaps of malt, bready, nutty, chocolate and hard toffee, maybe some apple sauce and Swedish berry candies, I get a hint of spice I can't place

T has a fruity nut bar thing going for it, brown sugar, herbal hops come out, dark bread, not all that fr from the nose, decent stuff

M silky entry and creams up nicely, has some weight and the 7.5% is well concealed, herbal nutty finish has length

O not a bad version of the style, a big malt bomb with some spicy, herbal hops popping up here and there

Well suited for chilly evening, nothings going to blow you away but its respectable all around

650ml bottle - a strong Scotch-style ale, the brewery's winter 2016 release, made with Fuggles hops, and a whole lotta malt (and love, I gather).

This beer pours a clear, medium bronzed amber colour, with two chubby fingers of puffy, finely foamy, and somewhat bubbly tan head, which leaves a bit of disintegrating iceberg profile lace around the glass as it quickly blows off.

It smells of slightly biscuity caramel and toffee malt, muddled dark orchard fruit, subtle dark chocolate and coffee notes, a twinge of warm vanilla, and plain earthy, leafy, and grassy noble hop bitters. The taste is semi-sweet, doughy caramel malt, a further pastry-friendly toffee sweetness, black licorice nibs, bittersweet cocoa drink, vanilla cookies, and more hard to really get a grip on leafy, weedy, and grassy hoppiness.

The bubbles are fairly low-key in their generally playful and sort of supportive frothiness, the body a decent middleweight, and mostly smooth, perhaps a touch of that as yet unheralded ABV starting to pick at the corners of this metaphor. It finishes sweet, sure, but somehow moderated just to the point where potential tongue-scraping becomes a non-issue.

Overall, one of the better offerings of late from this picture-perfect mountain retreat brewery - they get the easy-drinking, but still strong ale nature of the Scottish down pat here. Nothing too complicated, and yeah, I do indeed wish that I had a roaring fire and some snow-laden peaks at which to look right about now - or maybe I'm just a bit nazzy (thank you, new desktop calendar!) from it all.