Sweet Potato Harvest Spiced Ale
4 Mile Brewing Co.

 

 

 

650ml bottle, @6.5% ABV, and one of the few new seasonal offerings currently available around here.

This beer pours a clear, medium bronzed amber colour, with one finger of puffy, very loosely foamy, and well bubbly tan head, which leaves some waves crashing on a rocky coastline lace around the glass as things slowly proceed.

It smells of baked yams, ginger, nutmeg, clove, and cinnamon spice, bready caramel malt, vanilla, a hint of yeasty mustiness, some indistinct candied fruit, and very, very tame earthy and floral hop bitters. The taste is gritty and grainy caramel malt, more blended seasonal spices (cinnamon and nutmeg standing up to get their damn fool heads shot off), dried vanilla pods, free-range simple syrup, a much lessened generic autumn gourd flesh character, and more rather understated leafy and weedy hoppiness.

The carbonation is fairly timid in its barely-there frothiness, the body a decent middleweight, and mostly smooth (maybe the various spices getting in the way a little too much), with a very minor airy creaminess arising as things warm up a tad. It finishes more or less off-dry, the lingering sweet potato and caramel malt sweetness carrying the (Thanksgiving) day.

Overall, this is a basically agreeable version of the 'style' (Pumpkin beers, that is), using a bit of a sidestep in terms of the guest starchy vegetable. My mom always made mashed sweet potatoes for Thanksgiving, and yet I never really took to them - of course, I miss both of them a hell of a lot right now. Anyways, this would have been much better if I'd remembered to crack it yesterday, but, you know, fucking Thanksgiving, and all.

 

 

Hint of sweet potato. Grainy. Spicy. A bit sweet.

Like sweet potato fries without the salt! Slightly smokey.