Holy Smoke

Deep cranberry juice-red body, thin buff head. Toasty aroma, earthy peat, and smoke, but the latter is not overpowering. The body, though, is replete with smokehouse flavors, blending with caramels, toast, and dark fruits with a tart kick and finish. Reasonably tasty, but I get the feeling that behind the smoke lurks a rather thin, ordinary beer. Thanks Paul (blankboy) for the bottle!

Bottle: Poured a black color ale with medium head with very little retention. Aroma is lightly smoked with some strong malt. Taste is quite enjoyable, almost like a mix between a light scotch ale with some notes of malt a little bit of smoke. As previously mentioned in past rating, body is a bit thin and I’m not sure this should be considered a smoke ale since there is very little smoke in this.

Nice smokey nose, good mouthfeel, almost like Bamberg malt (Schenkerla) with spome acidic points, nice bitterness in the end, nice balance...much more interesting than Northumberland

2026 rating: Dark brown. Not much head. Soft, sweet and smokey. This is not unbalanced on the smoke side.

2002 rating: Light brown; with 10% peated malt, this is a little unbalanced, in a Laphroaig kind of way, with big burning embers and underlying malts that fight to sustain the beer. If you've already numbed your palate a little bit, this is nice stuff, but could be a little overpowering otherwise. 6.5/10