Burton Ale
Vancouver Island Brewing

Gladstone Brewing/Vancouver Is. 'Burton Ale' @ 7.5% , served at GCBF'17 on tap & a 650 ml bottle purchased for $7
A-pour is a light cola brown from the tap/bottle to a copper in the glass with a medium beige head leaving a spotty lace along the sampler/pint
S-roasted malt & sweet molasses
T-strong amber ale , roasted malt , almost burnt , leaving a bitter finish
MF-ok carbonation , feels full bodied
Ov- cross between a English Strong Ale , English Brown Ale & a Amber Ale
prost LampertLand

650ml bottle - a collaboration with Gladstone Brewing, with the aim to create an example of the style that inspired the more contemporary IPA.

This beer pours a murky, dark bronzed amber colour, with two fingers of puffy, loosely foamy, and somewhat fizzy beige head, which leaves some decent deteriorating limestone wall lace around the glass as it quickly hies it outta there.

It smells of grainy and bready caramel malt, a lesser biscuity toffee sweetness, strong bruised pome fruity notes, and some mild leafy, weedy, and gently perfumed floral green hop bitters. The taste is semi-sweet, gritty and grainy caramel malt, warm toffee pudding, applesauce, faint generic citrus rind, a subtle buttery cracker thing (think Bretons), and more understated earthy, musty, and sauced-up floral verdant hoppiness.

The carbonation is fairly benign in its bored-seeming frothiness, the body a solid middleweight, and mostly smooth, with just a touch of booze intransigence maybe not playing so nice with the other kids here. It finishes well off-dry, the big malt almost the only lingering game in town.

Overall - not having been privy to English beer 200 years ago (I wasn't quite of age), it's difficult to say if they have achieved anything in this offering. As it stands, it's a respectable enough Strong English Ale by current measures, which I would expect coming from a brewery on Vancouver Island.

Obviously I wasn’t around 200 years ago, but this seems a lot malters than I had envisioned. Is there a bit of diacetyl, or is that just the British Crystal?