Southampton 10th Anniversary Old Ale

Formerly brewed at Southampton Publick House
Style: Old Ale
Southampton, New York USA

This offering from Southampton pours a dark red closing in on brown with a powerful tan head that leaves a cascading body dark and georgeous! The smell upon opening the bottle is very sweet smells of caramel and roasted nuts come to mind. Brown sugar, vanilla, blood orange?, citrus, huge upfront hop presence. The taste.....wow! brown sugar, dark fruit, plum, figs, oily bitterness and a small alcohal presence in the mouthfeel which also has a smooth port quality. The finish has a heavy fruit malt backbone balanced with spicy hops and has a very smooth aftertaste considering the alcohal.

750 ml corked and caged bottle. Pours to a deep caramel to chestnut color, with a rocky, white head, and a lively carbonation. The nose on this beer is very nice with lots of good dark, sweet, and carmel malt aromas paired with some estery, fruity aromas. The palate is firm, with good carmel, sweet, and nutty malt flavor, paired with tangy, estery fruit. The lively carbonation of this beer works well in my opinion, and lifts some of the cloying maltinesss off the palate. This beer finishes with more malt and fruit, and then ends a touch warming. Really well done old ale, that strikes a nice balance between malt and fruity esters. Well done beer.

Big thanks to luiss for this one. Pours heavy ruby with 3-finger khaki head. Aroma of heavy vinous fruit, caramel malt, cobwebby earthy peaty chocolate, some sweet plum, molasses, and even a twinge of aged cheddar cheese. The flavor is like a medium bodied cabernet at first, with caramel malt, earthy notes, plus plum, blackberry, cherry, and even some cognac at the finish. The palate is dense, complex, well balanced, and just outstanding. Get ya some, even if you have to rive to Luiss’ house!

Bottle. Wow is this beer coming into its own now or what? The flavors jump out at you. Full on dried fruits and vineous. Ok the other hand if you closed your eyes, you’d swear you were eating a Mounds bar. Plenty of caramel, burnt sugar an molasses if you’ve got a sweet tooth.

bottle. compliments Maxxdaddy. great bottle. mahogony pour with thin frothy light tan head. raisons and dried cherries, nutty malts, liquorice, yeast aroma. medium body, robust flavor, excellent balance. rich maltiness, carmalized sugars, rich subtle chocolate, figs and raison, maple, and mild spicy finish. Truely excellent beer.

Bottle: Courtesy of renhed. Dark brown pour with a massive, pillow-y tan head. Roasted and caramel malts, sweet bread dough and some dark fruits are balanced amazingly in the nose, some very tame spiced aspects noticeable as well. Quite amazing smelling stuff, really. The body on this is great, creamy and silky, yet still retains a good level of carbonation to keep it from being too one-dimensional. Talk about a malt bomb, wow, some caramel and cinnamon dipped dark fruits linger around behind the malts. Amazing stuff.

when pouring beer into authenic belgian glass the color was mahogany with beige head, aroma was sweet. Loved the flavor with hint of raisins with rum in background yet creamy with head. Medium to full body with a dry finish. Love the feel, taste and alcohol content but I love belgian beers and this was a very good copy of a belgian I had overseas. Please, make more this was great especially at the price.

750mL bottle drunk on 10/17/07 at some 16 months of age.
Wonderful appearance, with a clear, deep mahogany brown body, tinted with garnet, that is topped by plentiful amounts of moderately dense, beige head. Retention and lacing are excellent.
Talk about improvement. I guess this gets this year’s award for "Most Improved Beer". Had it when it was about three or four months old and was very underwhelmed. It was punchy-sweet then, with moderate alcohol dryness and just too much stickiness. Little/no complexity had emerged/developed.
Fast forward a year and I’m sitting here with one of the best, if not the best, old ales I can think of (4th dementia isn’t a true old ale). It dosent have any traditional yeast character, nor was it barrel-aged/blended as was the original style, but the malt flavors seem to be about the epitome of what I’d expect in an English old ale. Rich on the palate in its maltiness....but only to a reasonable extent, and tapering off in to some dryness, and importantly, dark fruitiness. The balance of dark fruit esters and malt sweetness here is nearly, if not, perfect. The tongue curls around light chocolate fudge-like notes that are immediately dispersed by more dry, almost woody-like medium malts. Raisin and vanilla notes look on from the sides of the palate, adding pleasant complexity and the flavors culminate in to an almost cola-like finish, that has just traces of alcohol to add dryness and create complexity with the malt sweetness. Chocolate-vanilla-raisin is the best approximation of flavor I can give, and the attenuation, at this point is near perfect as well. Tending sweet, as an old ale is apt to do, and maybe slightly too much so overall, but I’m also very sensitive to sweetness. Hard, crusty, and again woody malt notes are lightly intersparsed in to the flavor, giving it an elegant, almost aged-red-wine-like feel. Carbonation is medium-low and tight, helping to accentuate the supple, rich body. Really, really good and shockingly drinkable. I’ll be damned if this stuff dosent keep getting better as it sits out, but I don’t know yet, as everyone who shared this bottle, including myself, drank it down before I really gave it extended time to breath. Just that good. I’ll certainly be getting another bottle or two to try. Thanks to Beastiefan2K for the tip!