Grand Teton Spiced Brown Ale

Weird spicing that defied my best efforts at deconstruction, other than cloves and cinnamon. Caramel and toffee maltiness. Very light earthy hopping. Some pine notes in the finish. Peculiar but drinkable.

Rating #300. Bottle from Rayboy. Poured a dark, murky brown with a beige head. Heavy spices of coriander, cinnamon, clove, and other spices that may or may not begin with the letter C, all weave in and out of a nice malty backdrop. A nice effort and the best I have had from this brewery.

I liked this one much more than my colleague frankenkitty. The aroma brought back memories of walks through pine forests on cool Spring mornings, ale in hand - pine needles and berries in the air with a whiff of toasty malts and spices from my glass. The spices do tend to dominate the flavor, drowning out the malt, but to me it was refreshing and cleared my palate nicely. The finish was a cooling pine and clove... what was really needed with all of the beers being sampled by The LoSBD at El Borracho’s brew house.

<font size=-4>Thanks to <a href=http://www.ratebeer.com/ViewUser.asp?UserID=18266>RAYBOY01 and his wife.<font size=-1>

This poured a clean, ruby/mahogany with a creamy tan head. Well-spiced aroma with clove and ginger on top of cherry and malts. Mouthfeel was too fluffy and it couldn’t ground the spiced flavors which floated around all over the place and didn’t really amount to anything significant. An overall dry, malty and spiced beer that left me non-plussed.

<font size=-4>Shared at a meeting of <a href=http://www.workinlate.com/LoSBD3.html>the LoSBD 04/15/06<font size=-1>

1L bottle. It pours a clear ruby red in color with a good head and no lacing. There is spice and malt in the nose. It is sweet and earthy in flavor. Not bad but not great either.

On Tap at Kahootz: Cmon guys - why be so hard on this one. For a brown ale it seemed to match up to the super malty flavors with barely any hop presence. Isn’t that what most brown ales are like? Anyway I noticed almost all of the ingredients in the commercial description. When they say complex, I imagine they meant complex according to the ingredients listed. In my humble opinion, I think it passes the test. For a brown, it enjoyed the more than average carbonation. The cinnamon-like spiciness was different and enjoyable. Another sweet flavor noted was cloves. There was a slight metallic feel in the finish which I didn’t care for. Overall, I thought it was a creative spin on a brown ale. That raises my last question -- when does a brown ale with spice in it become an all out Spice Brew. Is "Spice/Herb/Vegetable" a separate type of beer or just noting an emphasis in a number of different styles of beer.

Bottle Like others, I got this with the hopes of a brewer with very average oferings in general, producing something special that looks as though it might aspire to heights above that which I am accustomed to for GT. Pours a clear mahogany with a modest short lived off white. Aroma is a malty sweet, woody, brown sugar. Very light on the hoppiness. Flavor is lots of malty brown sugar, nutty almost syrupy. Quite smoothand soft I thought, with vbery fine carbonation. Again harly any hops here. Finish is smooth and soft with a sweet woody aftertaste. Drinkable...yes Drastically changing my opinion of GT, one of the very few major producers in my area...? Alas. No

I bought this because I was hoping the Cellar Reserve line would start to kick things up a few notches but no. It pours beautifully but that’s the high point of this brew. I didn’t taste the complexity that’s mentioned on the added label..in fact, I didn’t taste much of anything. Maybe it *is* green and needs aging. I’ll try that next.