Harpoon Celtic Ale

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

on tap-pours a light tan head with copper color. Aroma is malt, sweet. Taste is dark fruit, malt, dry.

The beer pours an attractive reddish color with less than a centimeter of fizzy off white head, which quickly dissapates to a slight film collecting around the outside of the glass A sweet aroma of roasted malt. The initial taste is somewhat sour, not very malty. Sour aftertaste. Not very much flavor in this thin filtered beer. Slightly metallic mouth feel.

The Hibernian pours a nice garnet color with a fizzy, off-white head. Fully diminishing head leaves no lacing behind. Aroma is of mild hops with hints of flowers and perfume. Light malt as well as alcohol. There is an acidic initial taste, which changes to light bitter at the finish. Oily texture with soft carbonation left on the mouth. Happy St. Patty’s!

Bottle - Pours a nice clear reddish-brown in color with a thin whitish head that fades to a thin rim around the glass. Aroma is malty and somewhat sweet with a more than faint spicy hop undertone. Flavor is a bit weak and somewhat disappointing. Relatively tasteless... some mild maltiness... something metalllic... a nicely hop bitter finish. I expected more from the aroma and from Harpoon.

bottle, pours transparent red amber color with small head. aroma is inviting with mellow malty and spicey tones. molasas and brown sugar. flavor is slightly disapointing, nice at first with malty/brown sugary type flavor, then finnishes with a sort of hoppy watery metalicness. leaves little to no aftertaste wich would be refreshing in the warm months. An ok beer, wouldn’t buy again but i wouldn’t turn one down if i was given one. A good beer for someone who is transitioning from macro lagers to craft/micro brews.

Pours out a dark amber color, shades of reddish-orange with an off-white foamy head. The head sticks around throughout the downing of the glass, rather than disappearing quickly. The aromas are that of sweet bread-like scents which indicated the domination of malts. There are some hints of spice that give off an almost caramel-like scent, but it’s not as strong as in other brews I’ve sampled. The taste is what I would call common. This is not necessarily a bad thing, but it’s nothing special either. The malts dominate the flavor, as is expected by the aroma, but the body of the beer is disappointingly thin. The sweet caramel flavor dominated and there were hints of fruit and spice in the tasting too, but it all kept slipping by me very fast as I tried to pin down what I was tasting. There’s a bit of a dry bitterness on the finish, but the taste of the malts easily dominated this beer over the hops, and the attempt to level the field at the end seemed half-hearted.

forgettable in every way. little in the way of standout aromas. medium body and mouthfeel. pretty amber color. some malt and intial bread notes quickly fades to a bland finish. boring. not sure how harpoons rep was made but ive never had a great beer from these guys.

A pretty, deep red beer with a quickly fading off white head. The nose is all malt, roasted barley and biscuit with no hops to speak of. Its also a tad unpleasant. The flavor is the same, a little too much of the roasted barley overpowers the flavor. Some hints of plum and applesauce. No hops in the flavor either. Half way though and I’m a little sick of it. I’m just not loving this beer.