Big Rock McNally’s Winter Spice Ale

Brewed by Big Rock Brewery
Style: Spice/Herb/Vegetable
Calgary, Canada

341 ml bottle from TBS. Pours oraggey amber in colour, with decent cream coloured head. Aroma is dominated by cinnamon and nutmeg. Taste is sweet with similar spices. Smooth drinking. Nice warming beer.

After giving an unusually careful pour on a Big Rock product I was treated with a thin but very velvety light white / creme coloured cap that left exceptional silty, messy lacing and was retained without notable loss of body. The beer itself was an average looking darker amber that is crystal clear. The aroma is pretty decent if you are into cloves, ginger, nutmeg and cinnamon but the sweet toasty malts leave an aroma that is off base. The cinnamon smells powerdery. A vigorous swirl brings an abundance of sweet caramel to the surface. As it warms the spices take over. Taste wise there is a good dose of spices (as noted above) with the cloves and ginger (to a lesser degree) dominating. The caramel malts that hit in the middle seem unattached to the rest of the flavours - stark and singular. Finishes on the rough side, with a watered down finish in comparison to the blunt spices. Very little carbonation, bitterness that fits well by being noticeable but minimal. For the spice content and relative dullness this is quite drinkable but probably not beyond two bottles. I wonder how my farts will smell?

On tap. Pours reddish brown. Kind of bland, ginger aroma. Ginger, cinnamon, grain, spice, with a malt backing. Very interesting stuff, Christmasy. Perhaps a bit too much ginger for my personal tastes, but great stuff overall. Impressive offering from Big Rock.

On tap at The Kick Off. Taps a clear cinnamon brown with a small white surface film. The aroma is faint, clove, cinnamon, ginger, chrystal malts. The flavour is quite promising at first with some delicious gingerbread qualities but fades quickly into an empty shell of a beer. Mouth-feel goes from full to zero within the span of a second. Kind of a let down for how watery it becomes, though it’s still tasty and not tragically flawed.

Pours a chestnut colour with a small off white head. The first thing I notice is the distinctive Big Rock yeast. Their yeast smells like moldy food and stinky feet. Looking past the nasty yeast character there is nutmeg, cinnamon and roasted malt. The taste is quite similar to the smell with a gaping hole in the mid-palate, there just isn’t anything there. Roasted malt, nothing... and then nutmeg and cinnamon. The palate is watery and dull. This beer isn’t totally off putting, just not that pleasant.

Ppurs Amber, thin head, no retention. Smells terrible. With subtle notes of artificial cinnamon. Flavour is nice kind of a smooth nutmeg flavour with a little cinnamon in the finish. Not bad for Big Rock.

Bottle. Deep golden-orange with a spare white head. Aroma is mildly sweet and spicy - hard to pinpoint specific spices, but I got some cinnamon and ginger. Medium bodied - too light for what is supposed to be a "winter warmer", but OK. Flavour is nice, with some bread and toffee and spice, but again, too subdued to be a really solid winter seasonal. Still a decent brew, though, and it went well with the cinnamon-molasses cookies that came in the package.