Pike Kilt Lifter Scotch Ale

Brewed by Pike Pub & Brewery
Style: Scotch Ale
Seattle, Washington USA

Pours a nice mahogany with a thin tan head. Aroma of biscuit malt, caramel, raisin and dark fruit, with a tinge of spicy hop. Flavour was a little light in the finish but quite smooth. Again raisin and dark fruit compliment a nice smokey sour malt body. Very drinkable for a ’heavy scottish’

Pours an off-white head with a ruby-copper body. Bread, molasses, smoke.

Poured a clear amber with a nice foamy 2 finger head. Aroma is earthy and caramel. A bit sweet, peppery, heavy malt, with a bit of the smoke. Finishes very fruity.

in this epoch of dime-a-dozen blandly titillating brand names enlisted to drive beer and wine sales, it’s not surprising to see another playground level guffaw at the kilt. after a couple hundred years, you’d think the american imagination would come up with some other nugget of scottish culture as apparently fascinating as the kilt, but no, here’s another "kilt lifter" (there are currently 10 other "kilt lifters" listed on ratebeer) and hardy har har, isn’t it amazing what clever stuff you can come up with using only six brain cells? lame name aside, the beer glows like hot bronze on an anvil: fiery yellows and oranges that chew at the borders of being brown, but don’t quite have the requisite darkness. the amount of head on a given specimen varied over the course of my six pack; this final one exploded with a torrent like a crack in a submarine wall, causing me to cover the eruption with my mouth which both loosened molars and introduced beer to remote and previously undiscovered regions of my sinuses. the addition of a verrrrrrrrry cautious amount of peat smoked malt to this brew adds indeed a wafer of interest to an otherwise fairly nondiscript ale in the broad categories of brown-- or red-- or amber-- or whatever. again, i’ve tried this on a half dozen occasions and find it variable: i’ve had some sour, some oxidated, some quite good. in general, tin in the aroma blends with the chaffy malts to suggest a can of golden rolling tobacco along with an open package of starchy rolling papers. rather sweet, with dates and toffee tones among the malts and yeast, with bitterness in a citrus profile and one that is larger than what is typical for the style. a bit too varied for me to rate accurately, i’ll have to give it a fairly neutral rating.

Hmmmmmm...what to say about this one...it’s tasty. This scottish pours a relatively light honey-brown iced tea color with minimal head and lace. Smells sweet and a bit fruity (must be the ’esters’ - what the hell?) but quite nice. Very mellow and offers nothing shocking. Nice maltiness with a very roasted-nut kind of taste on the palate - I guess the ’peaty smokiness’ may be fitting, although I haven’t had much experience eating ’peat.’ This is one of Pike’s better brews.

"I’ve seen one too many kilts lifted after saying something like that!" Haha, okay, that’s funny, and stay cute, server girl. No really, you’re cute. I’d love to datecha, pigtails. Oh yeah, the beer’s brilliant too.

If a beer could be too crisp (which I daresay it could), this would be the one. I wouldn't say it was overly fruity tasting (the aroma was however), just enough to balance the bite that gets you in the back of the throat when you are ready for another fragrant sip.

Toasted, sweet, carmel aroma that's very appealing; full bodied and flavorful with some smoked peat, carmel, and some fruit; fairly smooth with a little bit of a late bite on the palate; a great brew for the money, quite flavorful.