Granite City Brother Benedicts Mai Bock

Brewed by Granite City Food & Brewery
Style: Heller Bock
St. Louis Park, Minnesota USA

Cedar Rapids, IA location. Pours to a chestnut colored body with a white head. The aroma is graham crackers, rice krispies, chocolate. The aroma is a touch light, however. The flavor, fortunately, is nicely like a chocolatey rice/graham cracker/nut power bar. The palate is very smooth. Nice feel.

Cedar Rapids location. Aroma of sweet toasty malts. Pours a clear amber with little off-white head. Caramel malts with a biscuity, sweet finish. OK beer.

a lot safer and less interesting than other mai bocks i’ve had. brown with a nutty aroma, very heavy on the malt in flavor. i ended up ordering another since it was the best of the beers i had there, but none really stood out.

Sampled at the Davenport, IA location. Pours a medium brown. Aromas caramel and hops. Flavor is malty without a lot of character.

The beer was a dark brown with not much of a head. This was a nice balanced beer that went down smooth.

Wichita: No way this is a bock - it almost defines the style of American Dark! Garnet color, light on body and effervescence. Mild caramel aroma, with a touch of cocoa. Flavor much the same, with the malts lightly astringent leaving a sense of tartness, with a bitter finish that seems a bit too much compared to the weaker malt flavors.

On tap: Pours a dark brown color. Sweet aromas, malts, caramel. The tastes were very sweet. Almost too sweet. The tastes were of brown sugar, molases, caramel, crisp crystal malts, but like Indra said before me ... in a little bit of a nondiscript way . Nothing special. I felt there was some alcohol taste in there as well.

Kansas City, KS location. 20oz. draught. Relatively faint but predominantly sweet and sugary aroma, slight hints of breadiness, roasty malts, dark caramel, tea leaves and a vague hint of fruit. Medium-dark red-brown color with a thin, fine head. Flavor is malty and sweet as well, but somehow in a very nondescript and general sort of way. There is also some light hop bitterness and herbal flavor up front, fading away and seeing some apple, raisin and nut qualities emerge, but finishes up with a blend of this and a weak, dark sugary component. Lingering aftertaste is somewhat strange and unpleasant, like lightly burnt fruit mixed with saccharine. Certainly is not the most impressively constructed beer I’ve experienced. Mouthfeel is fairly thin and lightly carbonated, body is medium. I can’t recommend this.