Smuttynose Maibock

Brewed by Smuttynose Brewing Company
Style: Heller Bock
Portsmouth, New Hampshire USA

Somewhat viscous golden body with moderate carbonation and a robust, dense white head. Yeasty sourdough aroma with light citric, melon, and peanut qualities, plus clean perfumy highlights. Smooth and pleasant malty flavor with good relative depth. Includes some nice spice and floral characters as well. Medium sweet with nice balancing, natural bitterness. Overall this has an interesting blend of heat, yeasty phenols, and hop flavor and bittering compounds and is nicely rounded and fairly complex. Doesn’t stray into malt liquor territory like some maibocks do. This is the best maibock I’ve had so far.

Aroma:mixe of caramel and citrus,ligh oxydation aroma....à Appearance:light hazy amber,huge head... Flavor:fully caramel,good bitterness,citrus hops...

(draft @ The Old Toad - Rochester, NY) Hazy orange color with a creamy off-white head. Aroma is nice and malty with some spices mixed in as well. Some fruits. Flavor has a fruit sweetness with a light hop flavor mixed in, with a very malty and smooth middle and a slightly spicy but sweet finish.

22oz bottle. dark gold/orange under a small white head. a great pleasantly sweet, sugary, malty, yeasty, aroma. flavors of honey, butter, lightly toasted malt, and bit of hoppy bitterness for a clean refreshing finish. malt dominated. medium-full bodied. excellent.

Excellent. Golden orange in color. Malty flavors. Nice head. Robust flavors. Clean. Great beer.

Pumpkin yellow in color. Tightly packed white head clings nicely with each gulp. Minerals, peach marmalade and cookie-like Munich entice the olfactory senses. Delightfully perfumey and honeyish. Natural carbonation is fluffy on the palate. Firm and snappy Munich malt is immediately enhanced by a delicate phenolic bite and a hint of pineapple which buoys and complements the sweet and well-textured malts. Assertive yet clean hop bitterness is lush and fairly oily. Alcohol is nary a factor, but does impart some nice peppery warmth as well as accentuating the bitterness. Very cleanly attenuated, and the scant marmalade and baked apple fruitiness which remains, beautifully dovetails with the fresh hay and honeyed-biscuit Munich quality. Exemplary overall balance. A limpness begins to tarnish a bit of the malt definition halfway through the bottle. Deeply dextrinous and compact malt frame merges with a lime-accented bitterness at the finish and a sweet honey-glazed pear flavor which lingers. This is quite the lively example, as it’s rather phenolic and estery. The bottle conditioning does an especially fine job of cradling the flavors. Another commendable effort by Smutty.

Golden orange in colour, long lasting off-white coloured head, good lacing. The aroma is floral, some must, yeast, some light sourness, fruits - mainly apples. The flavour is of citrus, floral and herbal hops, quite spicy, noticable alcohol. Moderately hot mouthfeel, medium body, high carbonation. Finishes long, sweet, some spice, hot. Its okay in a weird sort of way, didn’t really grow on me.

650ml bottle from the <a href=http://www.ratebeer.com/Place/new-york target=blank>Premier Gourmet in Buffalo, New York for $4.99.
Purchased on August 20, 2007 and opened on August 28, 2007.
Bottled in 2007.

Pours clear orange with a small off-white head. The aroma has lightly toasted malt, doughiness, esters and medicinal licorice like notes. Medium / full somewhat slick body with lots of gentle carbonation. The flavor begins with lightly toasted doughy malt, spicy hops and peppery notes. the finish is very hoppy for the style with spicy and earth traits and some dirtiness and and abv heat. A nice and interesting take on the style. I’d love to try this a bit fresher.