Imperial Red Ale
Ridgeway Brewing

 

 

 

11.2oz bottle 2017 vintage bottle #4263 purchased at room temperature last week. Bottle states no best before date is needed and 10% ABV. The beer pours murky, but not chunky, medium brown with a tiny khaki head on a fairly hard pour. The head recedes to a thin irregular ring and small island of tiny bubbles. No lacing. The aroma is moderate in strength featuring caramel, prunes, booze, and old leather. The taste is semisweet caramel (burnt sugar), prune, raisin and subtle notes of old leather & cardboard. The oxidation is slight and not unpleasant. Bitterness is medium to heavy. The mouthfeel is medium bodied with average carbonation and a somewhat dry finish. Overall, very good. I love this profile. Drinks like an English Barleywine and tastes great for four+ years of uncareful aging.

L- A lovely chestnut red/brown, pours clear (it's filtered) with a thin and fleeting off-white cap that's a small patch a minute later.
S- Surprisingly wine like, in fact fortified wine; blind-folded I'd swear I was sniffing a glass of sherry!
T- Woah, deep, pungent... I (genuinely) do that reflexive head-shudder on the first sip - this is INTENSE! Well apart from that, in general it taste is more akin to wine than beer, hard to explain, try it/similar and you'll understand.
F- The alcohol is 'visible' enough that I can feel it's numb brush across my palate. I understand that's something considered rather blunt and unrefined for a quality brewery (consider which 'Super-strength' beers you respect...). That said that sense of ABV% here seems even greater than 10% and I believe the pungency/richness are adding to it's impact.
O- I wonder if there is anyone in the world who could or would wish to session this? It's deep, intense, pungent, all in quite a full-on experience. To me it's a prime example of an after-dinner slow-sippin' beer, ideal for in front of a winter log fire. I'm glad I tried it, it's not a style I'm too familar with. But I likely wouldn't buy it again as I have no need for beer I drink to be quite so notably high-impact.
Bought from BeersOfEurope/UK for home delivery £3.49/330ml bottle, BB: 'There is no recommended best before' [the lable states!] Lot: '1.249'

Bottle conditioned. Vintage 2017. Clear auburn with a light tan head.
Toffee apple bouquet. Somewhat boozy with notes of barley water.
Sweet. Taste is similar to it's aroma. Fruity.
Soft feel with a light carbonation. Almost flat.
More barley wine than ESA and could also be reclassified as an AIRA.

Look: Deep clear amber. Pours easily, giving a light head that dies away as a barley wine should.

Nose: a smooth slightly winey and lightly hopped nose.

Taste: WIney and light malty flavour smooth with good sweet mouth feel but not chewy.

Aftertaste: Consistent sweet, lightly malted winey beer.
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Overall: Almost a belgian beer experience! Not as sharp as some English barley wInes (reminiscent of Eldridge Pope's Hardy;s Ale).

Got a 2012 vintage.

A: Pours a bright light amber and leaves a small rim of a head.
S: Syrupy barleywine.
T: Syrupy and cough mixture-like. Plenty sweet enough without being sickly. Has a nice orangey/earthy hoppyness, I'm guessing Fuggles. Initially slightly bitter but mellows out. A bit of liquorice towards the end. Actually gets a bit sweet and sickly towards the end.
O: Pretty good, but that shit called Gulden Draak has ruined big sweet beers for me.

Vintage 2012 - 23/12 2014
Looks great in read. No real head brings it down.
Smells great or caramel and loads of malt.
Taste: not at all sweet even if there is a Taste of caramel. Loads of dried fruits like apricots. Some herbal hops and back again to the caramel.

Overal: like a really good barley Wine it had aged really well. The Britts does it again!

Pours a red colour, very cloudy with large bubbly head that doesn't stick around, just leaves a rim of slippery lace. Not too bad.

Smells malty, with a slight toasty edge, mildly oxidised with a touch of cardboard.

Taste is very English, malty. Notes of grain but lots of caramel, with a slight toffee edge. Quite sweet. Really quite nice and enjoyable.

Decent body with a nice warming alcohol edge. Goes down pleasantly.

Definitely warming and sweet, pleasantly complex. I enjoyed this.

330ml brown bottle purchased from Platinum Liquor in Bellevue Hill. A 10% "Imperial Red Ale" with an "intense, even savage, 'English' bitterness". Let's see how it goes. This is the 2012 vintage, bottle number 365.

Pours a lazy amber hue, not really dark enough to be red, with a minimal loose ring of off-white bubbles. Body looks fairly fluid, but also fairly heavy and boozy. Minimal carbonation. After a while, the head just gives up entirely, leaving it completely flat and dead.

Nose is quite sharp with booze and with a toasty character I often associate with an Old Ale. Certain vegetative hints, and something sharp and phenolic: most certainly boozy in a solvent-like way. The toasty note is pleasant, but doesn't do enough to cut through the rest. I'm not a big fan.

Taste is also not great. Sharp, boozy characters run through from front to back, while a sticky sherry-like character provides a slightly unpalatable sweetness. Finish does have some of that purported bitterness, but with the booze it tastes more like some sort of solvent or chemical than an English hop bitterness. Feel is quite light for the most part, but the booze makes it feel heavier than it is.

Overall, I'm definitely not a fan. It's big without purpose and without a lot of class to its bombastic overreach. It doesn't deserve to be 10% ABV because it's not doing anything with that power. There's no subtlety, and very little complexity. Instead it feels a little like they decided that they could make a 10% ABV beer and so it was their duty to.