Capital Winter Skål

Brewed by Capital Brewery
Style: Vienna
Middleton, Wisconsin USA

I love Capital Beers. This is no exception. Awesome beer. Nice Caramel, hoppy, bitter presense in a smooth drinkable beer. Another huge thank you to JPDIPSO for another awesome mindblowing beer.

Tap at brewery. 2004’s Skal pours a beautiful red/amber color with a moderate/thin whitish head. Aroma on the malty/sweet side. Taste is powerful good. Honey and grain. Very balanced, but with alcohol/malt/hops all elevated. Creamy, quaffable but strong. I really like this beer.

Red-amber in color. A thicker, moderatately tight head. You can smell the smoky roasted notes immediately with this beer. Flavor at first is crisp and the roasted flavors quickly come out. The roasted flavor is definitely not a strong coffee roast, it is more mellow. Like roasted grain. Heavy enough to keep you warm in the winter, and yet not so heavy to weigh the palette down.

A truly complex beer. Each sip goes through a myriad of flavor stages. A distinct roasted flavor and the thin red-amber color give this away as a winter seasonal, but what truly stands out is its intricate aftertaste. Going from roasted, to tangy and mellow, and then to slightly sweet and crisp, this beer packs in a bewildering amount of taste, although nothing stands out in paticular besides the roast. The taste is disarmingly nice, faints hints of everything, but nothing overpowering. A distinct treat.

Great winter brew. Love the toasty, slightly woody flavor. Sometimes it tastes a bit like cherry to me. Clean finish and rather simple but very enjoyable.

I got a lot of flavor out of this. It had a nice big bocky quality, with light berry notes coming in from all over the place. Nuanced and nicely balanced.

Color is a clear amber with a thin off-white bubbly-foamy head that fizzed away after a minute and had some light patchy lace. Smell is very nice, its a sweet fruity delight of green grapes along with a bit of apple and peach and has a smoothing sweet malt backing. The smell and taste was very close to Hales Wee Heavy Winter but just a tad lighter. The taste is mild and light with a clean, sweet, smooth malt with a very slight and mildly bright hop thats citrusy/tangy, just a bit of green grapes and apple; all very subtle and smooth. Feel is light bodied and silky smooth, has a interesting light tang hold that reminds me of a wet wine and gets barely dry in the finish. This is very drinkable and is a very subtle, intesting beer.

I’ll rate the 2001 version. I really like this recipe. A nice copper color with a solid head. This year’s seems to be a little young and could have used a few more weeks of lagering, ah the pressures of getting shelf space. A really nice malt flavor, I believe begium aromatic malts give this smooth mouth feel (kind of like rye). I look forward to tapping the keg in my refrigerator in a few weeks to see if the extra aging help.