Wednesday, November 4, 2009

Those Lovely Gaels!


Sometimes I am really impatient, especially when it comes to trying my homebrew. Generally speaking I leave my beers in the primary fermenter for 14 days before bottling and then three weeks to condition. Admittedly I sometimes dip in a bit early, purely for scientific reasons you understand, to compare the fully conditioned ale with something in progress.

Thus it was that 11 days after I bottled Gael, a Scottish ale, I succumbed to temptation and was greatly encouraged by what I tasted. Yesterday, I tried a fully conditioned bottle - as ever I am using my Cyclops variant to describe my beer. On a quick side note, does anyone else laugh at some of the descriptions you read on BeerAdvocate and RateBeer? I have no problem with the premise behind both sites, and am indeed a member of both, but some people really do write Jilly Gooldenesque bollocks. Anyway, back to my beer:


  • Sight - dark amber, orange edges, large white head
  • Smell - malty sweetness, lightly spicy, very subtle cocoa
  • Taste - toffee, light chocolate
  • Sweet - 2/5
  • Bitter - 2/5
Oo-er missus, this is nice (purely subjective opinion of course, but aren't most things?)! I believe the ABV is only about 3%, making it a nice session beer, but it has a decent medium body so isn't watery when drinking it. One thing I noticed in particular was just how clear and sparkling the beer was, when I brewed it I used Irish Moss for the first time. Only a few bottles of this remaining in my cellar, and they'll be gone soon enough!

2 comments:

  1. It certainly looks the part. Great frothy head!

    ReplyDelete
  2. I hope my Galena inspired stout is as good, then I will have one hell of of a nice winter warmer! Bottling the spiced abbey ale next week, then it is time for the bruising barley wine, which I plan to age for a year.

    ReplyDelete

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