Oat Ale
Bell's Brewery - Eccentric Café & General Store

 

This pours a Amber gold color with thin foam. Crisp aroma with a squeeze of citrusy orange and a clean finish. It's effervescent and clean and easy drinking.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Appearance: a nice orange color thats a bit hazy. a white to off-white head that leaves a little behind

Smell: citrusy, with a little bit of graininess to it

Taste: nice strong citrusy notes that are not at all bitter followed by a subtle but complex graininess from the oats. very tasty for so low a percentage

Mouthfeel: surprisingly creamy. slightly bitter, very light and drinkably. very refreshing

Overall: thats one of the better beers i have had in a while. very refreshing tasty and light. a great beer to have on a hot summer day. wish this stuff was in cans or distributed outside the cafe

 

On tap at Eccentric Cafe, looking for something a bit lighter and more mellow to finish off the night. Oat Ale pours a halfway hazy golden color with some amber tints to it. A small, white skin atop the beer poses as the head and leaves just a few, weak lacing rings at the top of the glass before it complete fades away.

I'm trying to recall another ale I've had that blatantly included oats and wasn't a stout. Nothing comes to mind right away, so I applaud Bell's for switching things up a bit. I gotta say, I wasn't loving the aroma, though. It wasn't bad, just very muted and seemingly nonexistent for the first ten minutes or so. Being that it's a lighter ale, I'll give it the benefit of the doubt. Once it warms up a little, some musty hop aromas rise up, along with a very, very dry oat backbone. It's kind of grainy and has a slight cardboard-like smell to it, but not the kind you'd normally get from oxidation. Maybe it's just more of the intense dryness/graininess from the oats.

Thankfully, the taste picks things up a bit. It starts off with a handful of those musty hops (almost like Saaz, but I can't say for sure) and a lightly bitter induction of citrus pith. There are some small, white pepper notes that quickly make their way in, riding a wave of smooth oats and grains. It's very apparent from the mouth feel that plenty of oats were used - despite the somewhat light nature of the beer, the mouth is creamy, smooth, and much thicker than most 4.5% ABV-ers you'd find.

Twenty-five minutes or so into this one, it almost seems like a completely different beer from when I took my first sip. The warmth has really done a lot to the flavor profile. Leafy hops burst out in a much heavier way, the thick yeast starts to come alive, and the malts contribute much more sweetness than they seemed to before. I'm guessing a majority of the malts used were Pilsner malts? Again, I could be wrong. Lightly bready in the aftertaste, along with a damp, hop mustiness. The more I drink this, the more I get a nice honey sweetness from it as well. And the warmer it gets, the more and more the oats and grains explode from the flavor profile. This turned into quite a nice, tasty, refreshing beer.

Certainly it can be said for most beers that allowing it to get warmer is better and will help the flavors "pop". Though this isn't as typical for many pale ales, it's definitely true here. Twenty minutes in and this beer had completely transformed from something just "okay" to something that was actually pretty damn good. Unfortunately, I still never completely came around to the aroma - it was still a little "off" and just too weak compared to the flavor. But all around, this was a great way to finish the night in a light way.