Winter Warmer Ale
No-Li Brewhouse

Didn't rate this beer very good and I normally like winter warmers so there must have been something off about this beer. Don't really remember this beer so may have had at a Winter Brew Fest.

bottle. Nice pour, great aroma, but goes downhill from there. Average maltiness, not a lot of warmth, decent overall. Much better winter ales to be found

 

 

 

This is a dandy beer - not really "as advertised", but dandy nonetheless. It pours beautifully - frothy head, clear amber, lovely lacing as it disappears. To me, the flavour and smell scream "pale ale that got put into a winter warmer bottle by accident". There is plenty here to make me like it - bready malt, orange-pamplemousse hop bite, kinda like...a pale ale. I don't pick up much seasonal spice, though the warming ABV makes me happy in a Christmas kind of way?

 

 

 

Nice spicy, piney big red ale

 

 

full review: http://wp.me/p5urG4-gL
Poured a nice amber head. Small and lacy. Great amber/red hue. It was really difficult for me to get the light caramel smell I finally got. With the taste and palate this could almost be a year round beer. In my opinion, it wasn't what I have come to expect about the winter seasonals. Not saying it was a bad beer, just not what I was expecting. To me, I got an acidic taste up from with the bitterness coming in on the backend. It was on the lower end of the medium body.

 

22oz bottle, apparently part of No-Li's Expo Series.

This beer pours a clear, bright medium copper amber hue, with two skinny fingers of puffy, loosely foamy, and mildly bubbly ecru head, which leaves some chunky iceberg profile lace around the glass as it evenly subsides.

It smells of semi-sweet bready caramel malt, soft dark orchard fruit, a low-key orange and white grapefruit citrus bitterness, faint earthy spices, and a tame, lurking estery alcohol warmth. The taste is somewhat sugary toffee, softly grainy caramel malt, concentrated drupe fruit, a bit of seasonal spice - maybe some cinnamon, perhaps some nutmeg - fading weedy, piney, and citrusy hops, and ascending cold, steely booze.

The carbonation is adequate for the job at hand, what with its lifting frothiness, the body a sturdy middleweight, and more or less smooth, the malt taking on all comers, and even engendering a mote of creaminess as it warms. It finishes well off-dry, toffee this, caramel that, dark fruitiness over there, you get the picture, because the hops and alcohol kinda don't.

I suppose I shouldn't be so hard on this one, as one of the tenets of the style is a husky maltiness. Maybe it's my expectation of a PAC-NW brewer to hop the hell out of everything, but I know that to just be a (well-earned) stereotype. So, in the end, a tasty, engaging, and uber alles, warming (if edging on hot) winter brew.

So incredible. That is all I have to say. There is nothing I would rather come home to on a snowy winter day than this beer.

 

 

Pretty boozy. Nothing special, except for the fact that there's no weird ass gingerbread spices floating around in this one.