Heather Ales Fraoch (Bottle)

Brewed by Williams Brothers (Heather Ales)
Style: Traditional Ale
Alloa, Central, Scotland

Bottled @ DBF2004: Golden coloured. Beige head. Sweet and malty in the aroma. Some honey notes in the flavour. Malts and herps vaguely present. Dies quickly on the palate. Dull

Bottled. Golden beer with a white head. No carbonation. Spicy aroma with ginger, caramel and malt. Malty flavor with spices and caramel. Lightly dusty mouthfeel. Dry, bitter finish. Rating: 7-3-7-3-14-3.4. (060422)

Bottle. A slightly hazy golden beer with a fingerthick white head. Heathery nose with sweet pale malts and a flowery touch. A hint of ginger too maybe. Sweet malts, heather and some flowery notes. There’s some ginger-like notes in the flavor too, but without the almost soapy touch there’s to ginger. Medium body. Sweet, almost sugary towards the finish with heather, pale malts and some bitterness. Drying up in the very end. A nice and slightly quenching beer, but a bit on the sweet side. Like it. (090629)

Another one from the crazy Scotsmen…Flowers and herbs dipped in vanilla with a drop of lemon for good measure…Caramel syrup aged in wooden casks with a drop of honey for loads of pleasure…In the back of the tongue, a drop of bathroom cleaner for a good seizure…

Original rating from 3/24/07: Pours a hazy amber with sparse but persistent carbonation. Smells of heath, pine, some pepper, spices. Tastes of perfumy wildflowers and sweet malt with a rich flowery finish. This is an enjoyable beer, but not in the same ballpark as the pine ale.
Ar: 7 App: 4 Fl: 6 Pa: 4 Ov: 13

Updated rating 2/23/08: As an experiment, I cellared a 4 year vertical of this beer to see how the Heather affects how this beer ages over time and also sampled an older bottle of Highlands Heather Ale for comparison.

2004 bottle: Aroma and flavor profile is dominated by caramel, some tartness has creeped into this beer, but amazingly, the floral hints presented by the heather have become slightly more pronounced.

2005 bottle: Some fading present, lots of sweetness, some floral hints, but not quite as pronounced at the 2004 bottle. Spiciness has blended nicely with the heather.

2006 bottle: Lots of caramel and some nuttiness as well as some dark fruit. Floral character from the Heather is not as established as in the older bottles.

2007 bottle: Lots of spice and caramel, hints of heather, not as much balance in the beer.

Overall impressions: This beer actually tastes better with a year or two of cellaring before starting to fade at around 3 years old. Nevertheless, this more extensive revisit of this beer has caused me to rethink my rating of the beer and bump the aroma and flavor scores to 8s and the overall to a 16. Definitely one of the more interesting beers out there. I’m looking forward to doing a similar comparison with their pine ale in the not too distant future.

Orange-gold colour with a thin white head. The aroma is unsurprisingly very floral, with a faint malty character as well. Sweet caramel and a hint of peat. The flavour is also quite malty, with some sweetness, faint spiciness, and a very floral finish. The flowery character seems to last on the palette for awhile. Not as different as I thought a beer completely lacking hops would be. This is a good refreshing beer.

12oz bottle. Orange and clear color. Weird, strange ginger nose, spicy peat and mint as well. Spicy ginger ale flavor, watery and mild over the middle. Light textured cereal grains in the finish, husky and spicy, the ginger thing is weird.

I’m not sure why I like this so much. At Quenchers, a great bar in Chicago, I bought one of these for my buddy RAYBOY01. Same reaction. Odd floral aroma, but a nice look. Not bite. Not strong malt or hop flavor. Just interesting. I have to test some more.

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Yes, a hopshead nightmare. Taste the malt and try to understand early brewing with this one. Hops have become the norm, but were not always present in the past. How sweet, sour and sickening were beers with no bittering? The slight floral aroma and bitterness from the heather make this beer very interesting and enjoyable.