Harpoon Celtic Ale

Brewed by Harpoon Brewery
Style: Irish Ale
Boston, Massachusetts USA

Clear orange/copper color with a small head. Spare lacing. Subdued aroma of nuttiness, caramel malts and earth/hay hops. Taste is sweet with a bitter hint. Light body. Nice bitter finish.

Bottle. This pours a clear reddish amber with not much of a head. Nose is lightly fruity and malt. This beer is pretty thin and lackluster. Watered down winter fruit, malt with some smidge of bitterness in the finish. All in all, this one lands flat and was a disappointing Harpoon offerring.

Bottle. Butter cream malt and peppery hops aroma. Reddish amber color with small head. Creamy butter malt flavor with light hops finish. Moderate carbonation. Nice middle of the road irish ale - not bad but nothing to set it apart.

Pours a lean copper, not a whole lot of depth or complexity to the overall "eyefeel". the head is pretty thick if poured aggressively (which I did), cream/tan colored, the top is creamy, but the body looks frothy. Lasts longer than expected and leaves a lace. The head breaks down weird too, it leaves this hump in the middle while the outside goes down. I just realized that I wrote like a paragraph on the head. The aroma isn’t bad....per se. It just isn’t that great. There is some caramel maltiness to it, but there is also that macro feel to it. The skunky, corny, bad smell to it. So I’d split it right down the middle. The flavor is just sort of plain. It has slight character to it. A slight skunkiness, some malty backbone. The palate is very thin and sort of fizzy. The finish is.....well it goes down your gullet, thats about all I can say about that. Fine for standing around and drinking, but not worth the price (7.50 if that says anything).

Yeast aroma from a dark brown body. Medium palate gives tastes of terrible yeast and off flavors. Possibly a bad bottle--but didn’t have the normal signs of a skunked brew. Just not good.

Bottle, from Duvel tulip, at cellar temp. Best by 05/11/07. Clear body, red-amber color, off-white head leaving a decent ring. Aroma is nutty and mossy. Body is medium-ish, with a round texture. Flavor starts malty sweet, but an herbal bitterness quickly emerges. Finish is fairly dry, and reminds me of an English bitter.

12oz bottle from Shaw’s. Amber-red translucent body with a little less than an inch of light tan head. Smells of malt and floral hops. Biscuit and caramel malt with some floral hop to support it. Creamy full mouthfeel. Pretty good ale. Nice malty ale.

Deep amber with tan head. Malty, caramel/brown sugar sweetnes and a decent hop bitterness at the finish. Nice Irish ale.