Vintage Ale (9th Anniversary, 2022)
Machine House Brewery

2023-11-24
500ml bottle served in a pint glass. Bottled April 2022.

Pours a burnt caramel color with about a finger of coarse, cask-looking head that settles into a thick, uneven skin. Moderate active carbonation is visible. Smell is musty, dusty oak, dry toffee, nuts.

Taste is slight wet cardboard oxidation, toffee, strong bark / wood bitterness, burnt sugar.

Mouthfeel is just on the borderline between light and medium weight, actually quite pleasant. Overall, nice beer.

Handsome clear orange amber with a cap of foam in the Orval chalice. Interesting musty aroma of the hayloft. Pleasant spritz on the tongue with a malty body. Flavors of walnuts and roasted grain. Modest malty sweetness. Hints of oxidation, burnt sugar, and butter. A hoppy note and some bitterness in the aftertaste. Really quite interesting and a nice change from the usual blast of hops. This seems like a great example of a style I should be more familiar with. From the 500 ml bottle purchased at Elizabeth Station.

 

 

 

Poured into a Fremont small snifter. Pours a dark, somewhat hazy, mahogany brown with a quarter finger khaki head that dissipates to patches with a ring around the glass. Interesting pour that was virtually still during the pour, then developed the fine khaki head which then dissipated again. Aroma of biscuit, dry caramel and rye malt, raisins, rye crisps, hints of apple and faint citrus. Flavor follows with dry caramel, rye and toasted biscuit malt, raisins and other dried fruit with hints of orange citrus,rye bread. Mild grassy hops in finish. Medium bodied with light to moderate creaminess. By odd coincidence, Tynt Meadow Trappist ale showed up at the exact same time as Machine House made the same, very uncommon, style. And both are welcome. As usual, the Machine House version is authentic tasting and very English in the malts. They both tasted great and fairly similar, but this one has a much more distinct rye character and rye is listed as one of the mash components. Very nice. I also detected rye in the Tynt, but I didn't see it listed in the ingredients. This is a wonderful, malty ale that straddles the English strong and rye beer categories. I'm nearly done aging beer these days, but I'm going to take them up on their suggestion about aging this and comparing it to future vintages. Sounds like a plan.