Old Ben Ale

Today’s beer is the second one in this series. It is an Old Ale brewed by Michael Robinson named Old Ben Ale. This beer is one of my favorite styles of beer. It is a malty beer of some significant strength. So it is a bit bigger than a brown ale or bitter, but not as big and bold as a barleywine. You can expect these beers to normally be fairly low on the hops scale (at least by the perception of hops. There may be considerable hops to balance the sweetness, but because of age and the amount of grains used, the perception of hop character is normally low to none), but be fairly heavy on malt and alcohol. Normally I enjoy these more in the fall months, and don’t really relish them in summer, but I rarely turn down a good beer. So lets look at this malty bombshell.

Aroma: Nice clear malt profile. Up front you get milky caramel as well as some ripe plums, as the beer warmed it turned a bit more dark brown sugar. A bit deeper I smell something akin to a dry cherry wine. Which, unless you live near a place like the cherry orchards in Door County Wisconsin, you may not be familiar with. Booze soaked almonds also comes to mind in here towards the back-end. The aroma is not as sweet as some other old ales I have had, and it is mostly caramel in here, with the other players taking a supporting role. (9 points)

Appearance:  A rich amber color with some good clarity. I had to pour aggressively to get any head, but that can be expected in a 9% beer. What head I did get disappeared fairly quickly. (3 points)

Flavor: Up front is the flavor of caramel covered sticky buns. The alcohol gives it a boozy play in the adult version of the buns. Very rich caramel character, some minor chocolate flavor.  I also get the booze soaked nuts in the flavor as well, which to be honest is my favorite flavor component of the beer. A few other minor players come to light, such as the plums which also come across as pear at times. There is some hop bitterness in the finish that combined with the nutty flavor and caramel leads to a nice finish. I do have to say though that the guidelines state that beer should finish dry to slightly sweet. I feel this beer finished very sweet, and has a very sweet flavor throughout. A bit too sweet for me. But all in all good flavor that hits most of the major flavor aspects of a traditional old ale. (13 points)

Mouthfeel: very full-bodied with some lingering fullness even after the swallow. It may be a bit too full-bodied. That combined with the alcohol make for a long pint for me. I enjoy it, but couldn’t drink more than one or two. Carbonation is low, as it should be. (4 points)

Overall: A very good old ale representation. The nutty character combined with the alcohol remains my favorite attribute. The caramel character is nice, but combined with the sweetness, gets a little sickening by the end. If I could drink more than one pint at a time, it would be 2 at most. Toning down the sweetness a bit would make this a bit easier beer to down. But maybe that is a good thing, because at 9% things could get out of hand quite quickly if you could down a lot of these. Still, the beers complexity is very interesting, and the beer does taste good. The beer would pair very well with a fudge brownie in my opinion.  (6 points)

In the end I scored this beer a 35, but in competition I would be willing to come up a bit. I may have been a bit too harsh in the sweetness factor, but in the end, this would have been my score. A 35 would be about a B- or C+.