Winter Ale
Three Needs Brewery & Taproom in Burlington, Vermont, United States 🇺🇸
Strong Ale Regular|
Score
6.83
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Appearance - 8 | Aroma - 7 | Flavor - 8 | Texture - 8 | Overall - 7.5
Poured into a nonic pint glass, the appearance was a dark ruddy amber color with a sly transparency about it. Mild carbonation could be seen rising to fill a one finger white foamy head that dissipated at a nice pace. Mild stringy lace.
The aroma had some nice dark and roasty nuts, bready to biscuity malts. Orange peel spice. Dark chocolate. Apple pie spice at the end.
The flavor melds the malts to the spice fairly nice. Super subtle aftertaste, somewhat bready. Blended sweet bready to spicy finish.
On the palate, this one sat about a light to medium, leaning closer to the medium side. Good carbonation. ABV felt appropriate. Lingering malts lay down on my tongue without any cloying effects.
Overall, though brewed at Queen City, this is probably Three Needs best beer they ever brewed.
Clarkvv (16523) reviewed Winter Ale from Three Needs Brewery & Taproom 19 years ago
Appearance - 6 | Aroma - 7 | Flavor - 7 | Texture - 6 | Overall - 6
Draught pint at the brewery, with Muzzlehatch on 3/11/06
Deep mauve-bronze, very muddy and opaque, with some dark brown tresses and a beige head that is small and poorly retained, with patches of film sticking to the glass.
The nose smells quite spicy, plenty of dry, pungent, leafy herbs. Woody and dry, Fantome strange ghost-like as Barry says, but with a strong notion of mashed up hazelnut paste, very salty, sticky, dry toffee and hickory nut skins. Quite powerful in aroma, but no sign of the alcohol.
The flavor is heavily spicy, with near astringent nettle-like, bitter herbs, gale or rosemary or something like that. To balance the herbal dryness, a strong, sticky, powerfully well-extracted toffee malt with bits of dry chocolate. Near syrupy and extremely soothing on the palate, is the texture, but the toffee is very "salty" and yet quite sweet as well. The beer seems to traverse quickly between being nearly astringently herbal, heavily salty/bitter and powerfully sweet, without ever really striking a palatable balance. I’d appreciate this one more if it were served in a snifter and made to sip. Though the alcohol is never apparent, the strong bitter herbs build up too much, exacerbated by the low carbonation and sticky texture.