Spruce Tip Ale
Postmark Brewing

650ml bottle - it appears to becoming a more common practice to use spruce tips in concocting a brew. I wonder why?

This beer pours a mostly clear, medium copper amber colour, with a voluminous tower of puffy, finely foamy, and mildly bubbly off-white head, which leaves a fair bit of chunky splattered lace around the glass as it slowly dissipates.

It smells of gritty and grainy cereal malt, a pine forest after a good rain, some earthy yeastiness, muddled domestic citrus rind, and further leafy, weedy, and musky floral green hop bitters. The taste is bready and grainy pale malt, acerbic and resinous spruce needles, a hint of buttery crackers, some orange and lemon citrus pith, and more herbal, weedy, and piney verdant hoppiness.

The carbonation is obviously overwrought in its billowing frothiness, the body a decent middleweight, and generally smooth, once one's palate gets acclimatized to that heady forest floor character. It finishes off-dry, the malt and lush greenery jockeying for lingering dominance.

Overall - well, they weren't dicking around when they said that this is a spruce tip ale, because it possesses both in spades. Nice and chewy in its delivery, which makes my flavour-buds stand up and pay attention - definitely worth checking out if this is your sort of thing.

 

Appearance - Pours a deep gold with hints of copper, along with two fingers of bubbly white head.

Smell - Bready malts, earthy and floral hops, hints of spruce tips and lemon peel.

Taste - Fresh flavour of spruce tips (avoiding any PineSol or 'pine-branch-in-your-mouth' effects), followed up by the malts and mild hop bitterness. Touch of citrus peel/zest (lemon, I think).

Mouthfeel - Medium bodied with moderate carbonation. Finishes dry with a lingering bitterness.

Overall - I'm used to spruce infused ales that are in your face with pine potency, but I'm really amazed I can taste the freshness of the spruce tips in this brew. I'd like a little more spruce in the aroma. An easy drinking and fresh beer.

650ml bomber poured into pint glass 26/7/16

A clear golden liquid, a fair amount of bubbles but they only manage a finger of short lived foam that leaves no lace

S lots of soft caramel, butterscotch, herbal notes lots of sweet spruce and pine, some dry cereal and some citrus I can't place

T spruce later on is strong, has a strange gummy candy thing going on, more herbal notes and less sweet malt, decent pale with lots of forest

M medium bodied, fluffs up and flattens out, very gritty with a big pine and spruce sap finish

O it is what it claims anyways, the spruce give you the impression there's more hops then their actually is in there, drinkable enough

my bottles 5.7% not the 4.5% listed here so maybe they've been mixing the batches up a fair bit? It's decent beer but nothing really all that memorable, easy enough to drink I suppose...