Great Lakes Nosferatu

Brewed by Great Lakes Brewing Company
Style: American Strong Ale
Cleveland, Ohio USA

Bottle. Pours a deep, rich red with a small white head. Aroma is quite hoppy and includes some dark malts as well. Flavor is very hoppy with a slightly malty finish. Distinctive GLBC hoppiness that is present in some of their other beers, most notably Burning River. Excellent beer, complex yet smooth.

Location: From Rozi’s Beer and Wine in Lakewood, Ohio. Drank 12/19/2009 during DC Storm of the Decade after Brievitz Engagement Party.

Aroma: Malty aroma with a slight hint of hoppy resin.
Appearance: Dark red brown slightly hazy appearance with a light head.
Flavor: The taste is almost a red ale taste with extra hoppiness. Light hop aftertaste.
Palate: Medium carbonation and medium body.
Overall Impression: I really like this beer. It is like an extra hoppy red ale. One of my favorite Great Lakes beers. I only have one more, wish I had more.

Bottle courtesy of markwise. Pours a generally clear ruby brown color with one finger off-white to tan head that settles slowly. Aroma is sweet and floral with notes of floral esters, grapefruit, light citrus, caramel, hints of honey. Flavor is sweet and floral with notes of malt, caramel, grapefruit, floral hops, citrus, chocolate, light spice. Medium body with a floral hop and malt finish.

Pours a nice copper color with a thin, dense, off-white head. Aroma has a very lively Marris Otter malt presence, a great hoppy nose - earthy, light pine with lots of heavy overall bitterness. Flavor has a heavy Marris Otter malt toasted flavor, a very heavy bitter hops bite, earthy hops with a mild chocolate malt note and some heavy toasted finishing malt notes. Modest density and a smooth texture for a beer this bitter. Overall a fantastic brew and one well worth the money.

Draft at D’s. Poured a deep amber with a fleeting head. I remember mostly a potpourri nose with a relatively complex body of spices, flowers and grass. Palate was nice, a bit on the soft side for my taste.

Dusty old bottle thieved from a dug up coffin (courtesy LtDan) and busted open over the cold gray tombstone into the skeleton’s own cracked skull.

Staring in through the skull’s eyes, I can see a witch’s brew that gurgles to a floating 2-zombie-finger head. The brew itself slops around lazily like rotted brains with the same color of the blood that was sucked from the lifeless body years ago, only clear like the dead of a cool night under a full moon.

The putrid aroma wafting up from the skull is of freshly turned earth mixed with chewed up milk chocoate and a shot of booze from a castle in the old country. A glimpse of flavor strolls across the tongue as the beer slops down throat and shirt while poured across the jagged teeth of the makeshift chalice. It’s as if the old jaw was possesed and chewed up malt and choclate and drooled it happily back into my mouth. All of this with a gruesome dose of earthy hops that must have been harvested by the Grim Reaper from a vine growing on Frankenstein’s dismantled grave.

The beer across my palate is the bittersweet pleasure in the pain of being stared down by Dracula himself.

All in all, a terrifying beer.

nice aroma with distinctive hoppy and yeast smell. Great dark amber appearance. Not a lot of head. Great beer for hop heads with a lasting palate. Great beer.

Campfire smoke, roasted caramel malt and red ale flavors are balanced by a well-intertwined backbone of hops that linger with the malt and assist the impressive structure.