Avery Old Jubilation Ale

Brewed by Avery Brewing Company
Style: English Strong Ale
Boulder, Colorado USA

Dark brown colour, thick spongy off-white head. Flowers (roses) in the aroma. Very sweet and spicy, with christmas flavours. Nice palate, roasted taste. Good! Finishes with a strong bitterness.

One of the beers in my New Years Eve line-up and man, this was perfect. A great beer to end a great year. An aroma of sweet malts, raisins, toffee, caramel, hops, spices (thought I was picking up cinnamon too). Appearance is a deep burgundy/purplish color, excellent lacing and a nice head with near perfect retention. Flavors were a near match to the aroma, which was a good thing. Simply outstanding!

Pours a very dark amber with a BIG frothy head. Nice roasted malt aroma. Nutty spiced flavor with a touch of bitter hops and some chocolate.

Bottle rating from the Happy Gnome. Dark red in color. Very hard to get a read on the aroma here. Roasted maple nut flavor with winterish spices. Alcohol is well hidden. I wouldn’t have guessed this was 8% when drinking. Sweet flavor with a hint of hops. Interesting that in the commericial description they mention that there are no spices used. Could have fooled me. Would have scored higher with a more detectable aroma. Still good, but the full experience just isn’t the same when you can’t smell the beer.

I held on to this bottle for about a year because I got it from a six pack of identically themed winter themed beers, all promising to warm me up on a cold, snowy night. That line had become so trite and cliché that I just pushed the rest aside and let the biting winter cold finally take me. Somehow I survived until morning despite not having another winter warmer from the six pack, and I vowed that as much carping and captious tom-foolery as I might throw it I should give this ale the same chance that I had given the others. A little more than 365 days later I did, and I was treated to something familiar in its regularity. This whole genre of beers is what fiber does to the digestive track – it becomes predictable to a letter. I don’t even want to go into the same old, same old character and quality. It has no head, its ruby red, it smells like pine long dead, the smell is lead, with resin bled, and licorice for street cred. There, I feel a little bit better now. It’s all true, mind you. Old Jubilation is sugar on a rampage, adhesive with sugar molecules and nigh organic with its gargantuan pine resin presence. The only other flavor here is chemicals from a carpet cleaner, which needless to say is not a pleasing thing to have on the tongue. I’m still bent on the idea that drinking medium to low quality brews is helpful for my abilities as a Ratebeerian, but this style clearly has come cookie-cutter issues that need to be resolved, or better yet, absolved. Just cut down on the quantity of beer that tastes almost exactly the same. I appreciate all the wonderful and diverse label art, but it seems like it ends up being the same suds in every one. And as for the whole winter warming idea? When there’s a centurion legion of beers out there that can do it and do it with style I’m likely to go stand by them in the presence of a fireplace then make the best of it with a beer that tastes like everything else that it shared its shelf with. Again, it’s not the flavor I’m upset with. Only the repetition of the same flavor.

Bottle. Very dark brown color. Very good - rich and strong. Roasty flavor.

Pours a redish-brown color with an off-white head. Aroma is of sweet malts, nuts, and a hint of floral hops. Flavor starts off with the sweet malts and give way tho the hops. Finishes with a lingering hop bitterness and some slight alcohol warming.

Tap - PDX - Rose and Raindrop. In a tasting with other seasonals. Just what the dr. ordered for a cold damp winters day. satifsying and filling!