Berkshire Maibock Lager

Brewed by Berkshire Brewing Co.
Style: Heller Bock
South Deerfield, Massachusetts USA

Golden-tan. Slight haze. There’s some light fruitiness and vague malts. Some thick malts, fairly dull. Lacks brightness and roundness of sugars.

(22oz bottle) Fluffy, medium off-white head atop crystal clear amber body. Aroma is medium sweet, caramel, some honey, light grassy. Taste is moderately sweet, caramel, bread, some honey, hay/grassy, light alcohol. Medium body, light stickiness.

Pours a murky orange with a modest white diminishing head. Scents of banana, candy are present. Taste is of bananas, rasberries, pine, apple and some sugar. Finish is bittersweet.

22 oz bomber. Pale amber beer with a creamy white head. Fairly yeasty/hazy appearance. Pale malt aroma with some fresh bready character. Lightly honeyed. Well-balanced flavour although a bit less in the way of sweetness than I’d normally expect. Soft earthy hops over pale hay-like malts. Decent beer, but not a great one.

Bottled, 22 oz. Opaque dark orange, medium lasting head. Strong malty-caramel nose, simple but effective. Flavor very very sweet at the front, some bitterness creeps in at the end but also a bit of unpleasant flatness & cardboardiness. Still decent, just not quite what I hoped for.

2004 bomber. Ahh it’s been a while since my last drain pour. I kept trying this one and trying it, let it warm up but nothing seemed to work. Pours a copper gold color, mostly clear with a decent light beige head. Aroma is sharp and thick, tons of incredible lager yeast, rusty, soily and lightly sour. Flavor just didnt do it for me. It was like drinking spoiled milk mixed with spoiled apple juice (maybe not quite that bad). The lager yeast was all I tasted. There was some malt sweetness, but it didnt stand a chance against the huge yeast. Hops?? I couldnt find them. Maybe this had gone bad in shipment, but it didnt go bad in the refrigerator it was in. 7/3/2/2/5

Draught at Redbones on 3/23/06. Fortunatley this wasnt infected. Heavy munich malt and bock-like yeastiness chokes the palate at first, quite sour, grainy, with plenty of hard cereal-like malting. Lots of spoiled peaches. Really pushes the boundaries of what the palate (mine, anyways) can take. But the quality is there, and the unpast./unfilt. nature of the beer adds a fresh yeastiness and chewy texture that help keep it afloat. Light honey is drowned out by heavy munich malts moreso as it warms. Fruity, light in hops, just a sweaty, hay-like flavor. 7/3/6/3/11

On tap at Redbones BBQ. Pours a lightly hazy golden orange with an average size creamy off white lacing head. Aroma of honey, toasted grains, some hints of citrus from the hops. Flavor was a lot of up front citrus hop flavor along with some honey a bit dry with sweet cereal grainy maltiness.

Bottle. Gold pour. Whitish head. Aroma is sweet with fruit, malt and yeast. Flavor is pretty sweet and malty. Fruit flavor are noticeable. Especially apples and maybe some pears. Ok beer.