Berghoff Hazelnut Winter Fest Ale

Brewed by Minhas Craft Brewery
Style: Brown Ale
Monroe, Wisconsin USA

Blech! Disgusting. Pours a brownish color with 1/4" head. Smells of hazelnut and a bit of maple syrup. Nothing else comes through in the aroma. In fact, that’s the problem with this beer. The hazelnut just dominates this brew and makes it one sided. I strained trying to find any real aspects of this beer but it kept coming back to hazelnut and a bit of maple syrup (faint). It’s just too much with the hazelnut guys. It’s bitter and almost acrid. It doesn’t assault the tastebuds it craps on them. Yuck!

Bottle. Pours brown color with an average rocky white head that diminished quickly. Average sweet fruity malty aroma. Medium body with a smooth texture. Moderate sweet fruity flavor with an average duration finish.

Average at best. Straight from the brewery tour. Has a ever so slight nutty taste but nothing to get excited about. Glas I got to taste it before buying a six pack.

Poured a dark amber. Light colored for a brown. The aroma is rich with caramel and some hazelnuts. There is also some iced tea. I love hazelnuts, so I hope this beer does not dissapoint. The taste is iced tea with just a hint of the hazelnuts. There is also some very ligth caramel sweetness. This is a decent brew, but has a thin watery body. I would like a little more heft, but Berghoff is heading the right direction with a beer like this.

Sampled from a bottle. It pours to a golden copper colored body with a creamy off-white head that has SUPERB lacing. The aroma is hazelnut and vanilla extracts and a hint of red apple. Smells a little "fake". The flavor is toasted buttery malts, hazelnut extract, and a light roasted flavor. I tried this beer 6 months after I bought it. Overall, not too bad. The flavor is malty. I suspect it’s the Carapils malt that I’m liking in this. The hazelnut may be a bit too much. The palate is average.

I smell the nuts, but that doesn’t make it great. It’s good, but not great. It could use some more malt. It may be an attempt to balance the beer, but in this case, I ’d prefer a richer beer.

Slight hazelnut flavor. Does not look like a brown. Not much malt at the end either. Not to good.

Aroma is of extract hazelnut of course, a bit sweet and vanilla-ish too. Clear amber, slow steady carbonation, small cap of dull white froth; lace sticks in large moth-holed sheeting. Flavors seemingly touch some tasty surfaces of hazelnut toastyness with an extract-like sweetness, buttery bread tones stitch some of the toastyness together while the higher sweet tones keep a portion of it going til the end. Simple in flavor and length, not much more then anything I’d throw in my coffee really. Its not overly sweet but does ensue a bit of emptyness and doesn’t help that you can really tell its extract. Feel is shy of medium with a light creamy body and softer carbonation and has a few empty areas to it. Possibly a crossover beer to be used from New Castle to Rogue’s Hazelnut? I might just prefer this over a good portion of brown ales out there. Hard to say as browns aren’t to my liking usually as they are just to boring most of the time. This ones close so more then one may cause you to search for or open something better.